<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nThe grass in my yard is long. Shockingly, embarrassingly long. It’s an awful tangle of shin-high weeds (knee-high, in a few spots) that can conceal small objects. On either side of me are retirees who maintain yards that look like the green at St. Andrews<\/a>. My yard has yet to be touched by a blade this spring. Most people have mowed at least twice by now. <\/p>\n My mower is malfunctioning. It starts, runs for a few seconds, stalls. It will keep running if I manually pump the prime button, but the moment I stop doing that, it stalls. I messed with the choke, put fresh gas in the thing, and changed the oil, according to the ancient folklore. Problem is unchanged. I don’t know anything about engines. Don’t have the money to fix it. This morning I decided, “Screw it. I have the internet. This is a simple machine. I’m sure a million other people have run into this problem. I’ll just Google around, find the answer, and fix it myself.”<\/p>\n I was able to find a lot of suggestions like this one:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was very interesting. Obviously anyone who could perform all of the above would have already done so. I mean, I know what a carburetor does<\/em>, but if you offered me a fiver if I could point to it, your money would be safer than Aquaman’s virginity. If I could identify, disassemble, inspect, repair, and re-assemble one, I sure as hell wouldn’t need anyone to suggest doing so. I can’t imagine what sort of person could make use of this advice. You’d have to know everything<\/em> about the construction of engines and nothing<\/em> about their operation. <\/p>\n\n