Opus will you help me fix my washing machine?

About 13 years ago now we moved to this farm "not far" from our town of Libano, Tolima. It had an old house, mountain spring water and even electricity.

The rest, as they say, was up to us. For a good while, "we" (being generous here) washed our clothes by hand. That, by the way, is a lot of work to do. And, feeling what I can only imagine was pity for my wife, after a while my dad sent 500 dollars to get a washing machine.

I remember it well because it took 4 of us about 5 hours to get it up the path to our farm, tying it off to two long bamboos and taking turns in pairs.

Long story short, it wasn't working. I noticed one night recently by pressing its buttons. It was in one of those "not working" states where you think it really should be working, if only you knew the right series of actions to take against the mechanism.

I don't think I have the manual anymore, and my wife hadn't mentioned anything about it not working, so I went to bed. The next day it was confirmed, the machine wasn't working for either of us anymore.

While I really do like hanging out with Sonnet for many things, recently I have been testing Opus for "deep research" functionality and I have found it workable as a research assistant - the type of model that tends to say "let me run one more search before making a recommendation".

Its a tool, not a perfect one, for example I did not need a 6501EA1001, but I did need some help figuring out how to get the back top cover off.

But we got it, and I could even upload pictures to opus as he explained to me about the different parts of the machine that the observed behaviors could be pointing too. All these different bits and bobs do different things, and if one thing breaks, you can kind of detect which one thing it is by how things go or are going wrong.

Well, eventually we did find it. I think there is no commentary needed, especially once you "see it".

We have all sorts of wildlife - we are no stranger to it - but I think we all know what sort of critter is to blame for this.

Well, once we found the problem, just one trip to town and a few youtube videos later, and we are washing clothes again. Thanks Opus, for holding this conversation with me in your head for 3 days as I iteratively poked at our "old" washing machine - which is purring like a champ as I speak.

AI is such an interesting tool - it cannot fix my washing machine, and I have to admit that there were about 15 wrong guesses by Opus along the way (he never guessed mice chewed the solenoid live wire), but somehow this tool did empower me to get my washing machine working again.

And that's something.

Freedom and Friendship