Over the past several years, I’ve bought cars over the Internet, financed my house over the Internet, and made many relatively high-dollar electronics purchases, but I have never had such a satisfying e-commerce experience as I had today.
First, a little background. This morning, the plastic on/off knob on my dryer broke and I had to use a set of pliers to turn it on and off. (Of course, this is this sort of minor annoyance that can threaten to tip a challenging day into negative territory). I punched the model number of the dryer into Yahoo! Search and quickly ended up on partselect.com, where I quickly found a useful page with a diagram of the “control panel” for the dryer and clear options to order the needed part, and a few clicks later, I had placed an order for a replacement.
Thank you, Internet. After all these years, you continue to thrill me in wonderful little ways.
Update 07/21/06: To finish the story, the parts arrived at my desk yesterday (Thursday) after my Sunday order — just in time for the weekend laundry (and I ordered with regular ground shipping). Fit perfectly.
Chad Dickerson's blog 
The Internet has permanently and beautifully solved the replacement parts problem. I discovered this recently when I had to replace the silverware basket in my dishwasher. Instead of fishing through the basement in hope that I might actually have saved the manual I just found the info, found a store, bought the thing and forgot about it until it turned up at my door a few days later.
This — and renewing your auto registration online — has Made a Difference.