WombatNation

The KALX Fundraiser for 2006 runs through this Sunday. But don’t wait, call (510) 642-5259 to donate now. Yes, now. Hey, how can you possibly live without a t-shirt displaying an acorn radio lovin’ squirrel? I like the fact that it actually appears to be a hybrid wombat-squirrel.

Whenever we go to San Antonio, we always eat at a Mexican restaurant called Las Palapas near my mother-in-law’s house.

This is the back entrance to the restaurant. The sign on the door is a reminder that you’re in Texas. And I’m not talking about the No Smoking sign.

Fortunately, the contents of this box weren’t fragile. It was just some biking and soccer clothes I had ordered. USPS says, “Received in bad condition”, i.e., “Not my bad.”

Less than two months after getting my C2000 back from Capresso, it started misbehaving. The first sign was taking about 5 seconds longer than usual to draw a coffee. Then, I noticed that the expelled espresso pucks had changed from being dry, nearly solid pucks to crumbly globs of wet grounds. Also, less coffee was produced with the same settings.

Finally, two lights on the front panel started blinking. The manual said that this indicated the thermoblock was overheating and that I should run the frother to allow the machine to dispel some heat. That didn’t help.

So, I mournfully dragged myself over to the phone and called Capresso Customer Support to see if it was still under repair warranty. Instead, Moira (sp?) told me that most likely the coffee maker was clogged. Since the machine couldn’t expel the hot coffee fast enough, it was overheating.

Then she told me to use a dry cloth to wipe any coffee grounds from on or around the screen. She said that if that didn’t work, I should run a cleaning cycle using one of the cleaning tablets. I cleaned the screen, and now my machine is making perfect coffee again!

The screen is a little hard to reach on a C2000. After removing the tray, look inside and up to the left. You should see a metal disk with small perforations. Or, in my case, a bumpy, dark brown disk. Quite a bit of grounds came off the screen.

I don’t remember seeing this cleaning tip in the manual. But, now I do remember reading a comment on Coffee Geek that you should periodically clean the screen on super automatics like my Capresso.

Cleaning the screen possibly could have even saved me from the last repair. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pressure that had been building up before had damaged the O-ring, since the O-ring that tore went around the outside of the screen.

When you buy new eyeglasses, it’s a good idea to keep around the old pair, especially if you are lucky enough such that the prescription does not change much between the old lenses and the new. It’s always possible that you will take your newest pair in to be adjusted because they no longer sit evenly on your face, and the person adjusting them will break the frames. I’m just saying, it could happen.