What's that? Oh...the manufacturing date of my hot water heater. It's a well-regarded company, and it seems to have done a good job over the eight years and two months of its installed life.

What a wild coincidence though...it has an eight-year warranty!

Can you guess what the photo below the fold is?

Yup! And all of this happened quite suddenly. Almost a planned obsolescence!

How dare they build a machine that provides me with copious quantities of hot water without any expectation of preventive maintenance, and have it last eight years through hard use!