garage-door opener (and some short takes)

[cellio]

Our garage-door opener has been flaky for years and finally gave up the ghost this week. This morning I called Sears in search of a replacement. So I got out the phone book to look up their number.

They listed direct-dial numbers for a bazillion departments, none of which obviously said "garage-door openers go here" to me, and a general number. I called the latter. There was no "talk to a human" option, but there was an exciting automated system that was ready to serve me. Or something.

Digital voice: What department would you like?
Me: Garage-door opener. (To self: if I knew that I wouldn't be calling you!)
DV: Do you mean "hardware and paint"?
Me: No.
DV: What department would you like?
Me: Garage doors.
DV: Do you mean "hardware and paint"?
Me: No.
DV: What department would you like?
Me: Appliances, garage.
DV: Do you mean "hardware and paint"?
Me: Ok, you win.
DV: Please repeat your answer.
Me: Yes.

After all that, the "hardware and paint" department did not answer the phone. So it was time to do some guessing.

I tried "appliances" (noting that "washers/dryers" and "electronics" had separate entries). The person who answered had no clue how to help me, and couldn't connect me with anyone else.

Next I tried "housewares/small appliances", which I thought meant blenders and the like. The person who answered said I had the wrong department but she'd transfer me. I said "Wait! Satisfy my curiosity and tell me where you're sending me!", but it was too late.

The person who answered the transfer was able to tell me about garage-door openers, but I was thrown off and forgot to ask what department I'd reached. My next guess was going to be "lawn and garden" otherwise.

I should note that the only reason I persisted is that we wanted a one-stop solution: buy opener and arrange for installation without having to do a lot of running around. If we had a reliable small-jobs contractor or were electrically handy, I would have gone to Home Depot or Lowes instead.

By the way, when we went to the store this afternoon (no, we couldn't just arrange for an installation person to just bring one), we found the garage-door openers behind the exercise equipment and across the aisle from basketball equipment.

Short takes:

Real Live Preacher recommended the "Velveteen Rabbi" weblog, so I took a look. I found this post about the liberal/conservative divide in Judaism to be interesting. The weblog is syndicated on LJ as velveteenrabbi.

While I'm not comfortable with Bush's nominee for attorney general, my opinion of the guy just went up a notch. Some folks are mad at him because he didn't elevate his own opinions over the law. Gonzale s said in a 2001 interview: "The question is, what is the law, what is the precedent, what is binding in rendering your decision. Sometimes, interpreting a statute, you may have to uphold a statute that you may find personally offensive. But as a judge, that's your job." Wow, someone in a position of authority who gets it! Now, if I could just be more confident that his ears hear what his mouth is saying...

Comments

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Hertz is engaging in a polemic against the documentary hypothesis, which has essentially been lost.

That's what I meant -- he's too "traditional" in the sense that he argues against a hypothesis that is required for study at JTS today. He's being phased out because historicism has long been an essential component of a Conservative approach to halacha.

I wouldn't say that Hertz is timeless, only that he provided an interesting, temporary common ground among different streams of American Judaism.

As for the argument, the documentary hypothesis had (and has) its own problems. Hertz, like a lot of Jews who came of age in the late nineteenth century (I.M. Wise, for example) were sensitive to the very anti-Semitic overtones of contemporary biblical critics. So he engaged in a work of apologetics, which has a long and honorable tradition in Judaism. It's just dated.

From his perspective (like that many orthodox people today) it's not a matter of logic over faith, it's that the burden of proof is on the critics, not the tradition. So all you have to do is show that the critics are wrong or biased on this or that detail -- which was certainly true of biblical critics at the time Hertz was writing.