Yeast Washing Question

I read the yeast washing sticky on here, and loosely followed it today with some WYeast Pacman. What I did was boiled the jars, kept them full of the water and let it cool. After bottling, I dumped them all onto the yeast cake and swirled it around some. Then I dumped the water/yeast slurry back into the jars and now they're in my fridge. I have two questions about it:

1. When I use these jars of yeast, I've heard that I'm only suppose to dump in the liquid on top and not the sediment. Is this correct? It seems like after it settles, there would be pretty much only water on top and it wouldn't work.

2. How long can I expect these yeast samples to be good for?

you want to dump the liquid layer, but not in the starter or fermenter. you decant, pour out, most of the liquid and pitch just the slurry of sediment (which should be yeast) into your starter or fermenter. you may want to leave just a little bit of liquid to make the yeast sediment easier to swirl around and pour into your starter.

not real sure about the shelf life, but i believe they'll last a few months if they stay refrigerated.

if you pitch the liquid and not the "sediment" into your fermenter, i can't imagine you'll get much benefit (or fermentation)...that tiny cake in your jar has all the goodies in it.

the yeast have all dropped out of suspension and are sleeping on the bottom of those jars. if you only add the liquid and not the "sediment" (some of which is yeast), you'll just be adding some very diluted, stale, and old wort to a fresh batch of brew. yum!

when you're washing: if you dump the diluted slurry from your fermenter into, say, a one gallon jug, let it sit for twenty minutes or so, and then decant the suspended yeast into your jars, you'll get a much cleaner (i.e. less sediment) harvest.