It’s not that I can’t do electrical work. I just know how it would end. Finger in the outlet, body parallel to the ground, skeleton blinking on and off, smell of burnt hair and fabric, superpowers. But I know how to isolate a problem. I know that if one outlet doesn’t seem to work, you press the RESET BUTTON to test it. Or the TEST button to reset it. Either. Both. If that doesn’t work, then what you’re plugging in might not be working, so you test the outlet with something you know works, like a string of Christmas lights. Of course, if those don’t work, then it could mean the Christmas lights are burned out, so you take them to an outlet you know works, and try them there. They work! Great. So we’ve narrowed it down.
What was I doing again?
Oh. Right. Well: the electrical system of the Oak Island Water Feature has been dicey for a while. If you recall the tale, the contractor installed a preposterous amount of outlets and conduits and whatnot. There are eight outlets. Six appear to be dead. When I plug the main pump into one I know is live, it doesn’t work, which suggests the pump is dead, except that eventually it comes on. Now, I’m no expect, but if there’s one thing I know about electricity, it’s not one of those eventual things. The wires don’t have to warm up for the juice to get through. The undependable quality of the pump I ascribe to a short in the plug. But that is the least of my problems. Having cleaned out the tank, I need to replace the lights that no longer work. But are the lights out, or the light fixtures corroded beyond use?
This means swapping bulbs out until you have an answer, then putting the bulb in a plastic bag, labeling it “TANK BULBS” with a Sharpie, driving to Home Depot, and discovering you left the bag at home on the counter. Well, it was . . . this kind. So you get that, and some other bulbs, and some replacement lights that are cheap and plastic, but they’re going to be buried behind hostas, and the whole issue of “Cost” and “expense” are weighing on your mind because it’s apparent the house is going to need some ruinously expensive foundation work, and this means another year of bleeding ducats to keep this place standing. What. Was. I. Thinking.
Oh, I know what I was thinking; grand house, magnificent site, a perfect place for my daughter to grow up, and I don’t regret any of it. Anyway. While I was standing in the aisle debating which lights to get, two young ladies were debating which solar lights to get. A clerk was helping, inasmuch as he was reassuring them the lights would work fine. I had to contribute. Random acts of kindness. Said my experience with solar was consistently disappointing. The light was weak, it died quickly, was undependable. I don’t know what came over me. Clerk looks at me: you I need like a hole in the head, Jack. Thanks.
“We can’t put in wires,” said one of the young women, “because the landlord won’t let us. We just want to have a light under the tree that goes up in the tree.”
So the clerk showed them a spotlight which will paint the bark with about 47 photons, total, if the sun has been shining all day and is also in nova mode. I made a great show of being interested in my bulb options, then moved off.
Went to garden to get a planting box. Wife wants to make a vegetable garden on the garage roof. (Don’t ask. I’d have to explain.) (Okay, okay. Garage is on the ground floor. House is up the hill. We can walk on the roof.) (Oh, there’s more: roof was leaking a few years ago, so we had someone foam it with waterproof gunk, and it’s cracked and ripped and looks awful, but who cares about the aesthetics of their garage roof, right? Except that you see it when you walk up to the house, so I need to call the contractor tomorrow and ask him to take a look at his handiwork.) She bought one planting box, but wanted another, so I got one, and bags of dirt, and shoved it to the checkout line. The fellow takes all my lightbulbs, puts them in a special bag so they’re not broken, beeps everything.
“Swipe your card, and hit cancel when it asks for your pin,” he says. There’s a sticker on the pad that says “HIT CANCEL FOR PIN.”
It’s been like this for at least six years. Probably more. The system was set up to demand a PIN for credit and debit, or it was written to ask for PIN no matter what, then accept CANCEL when someone used credit. In other words, the counterintuitive CANCEL command is part of completing the transaction. Every clerk has to say this every time to every customer. I wonder if the person responsible for this programming fubar ever goes to Home Depot, sees his handiwork, and feels a hot flush of shame. Or a smirk of satisfaction because he hated the client.
I push the cart through the doors, setting off the security system. They wave me through. Everyone sets off the security system. It’s their way of saying goodbye.
Load everything in the car. Start the engine. Realize that he didn’t put the bag of light bulbs in my cart. Go back. Get bag. He hands it to me like it was my fault. Maybe it was. I’m not good with electricity. I walk through the door, set off the security system, turn around, they wave me on. See, if you don’t stop and look confused, that’s when they get suspicious.
Then it’s Target, Cub Foods, People’s State Intoxicant Distribution Node #23 Southwest Sector, and home. I check the lights: I bought the wrong ones. Of course. Well, I had to go back for cedar chips the next day anyway.
Because every year I have to dump 27 bags of cedar chips around the garden area to keep the weeds down. The weeds come up anyway. Life will find a way, as Professor Jeff Goldblum taught us.
I fix all the low-voltage lighting along the back fence and in the patio area. Half don’t work . I remember: sometimes when the lights come on, it trips the breaker. Go downstairs, flip the switch. It works. I note five lights are out. I have three spare bulbs. Well, that’s another trip.
I would pour a drink of ice-cold Apple-infused Stoli if I’d had it in the fridge, but I haven’t, because that’s warm-weather stuff. And it was rainy. Clouds with imminent drama:
Another picture from the Home Depot gallery of things that would drive a copy editor mad:
Let’s not and say we did.
I said that to my daughter the other day, and she didn’t get what I meant. “It means, let’s not do it, but say that we did.”
“Why?”
“It was clever in the Seventies.”
“You’re old. And weird.”
Uh huh. Well, up on Sunday; put together the planting boxes. Used the cordless drill, from the Makita Tork-les collection. The drillbit’s probably old. It’s not like I do a lot of drilling, but it’s probably dull. Still, you’d think “wood” wouldn’t be that much of a challenge. Took me 45 minutes to do the first one, and 10 minutes to do the second. The screws aren’t exactly flush on the first one, but you know what? I’ll sleep at night nonetheless. Feeling full of handyman confidence, I decided to troubleshoot the lights on the front of the house. Plugged in the transformer ZZZZZAP! oh right. That’s the bad outlet I need replaced. Remembered that I ran an extension around to the back of the house. Plugged that one in.
Nothing.
So . . . all the lights are burned out.
No, silly goose. The timer on the transformer is off. Reset it, advance it, wait for the click: nothing comes on. Hmm.
So . . . the transformer is burned out.
No, you idiot, that’s the outlet that blows the circuit breaker. Go downstairs. Reset. Go back to the transformer. Turn it on.
Nothing. So . . . hold on, there’s a solution: plug in the transformer to the outlet in the front I use for Christmas lights.
Nothing. So . . . the transformer’s burned. No, that can’t be. Get the Christmas lights. Plug them in.
Nothing. So, the outlet’s dead. No, wait: it worked a while ago. Maybe it’s the Christmas lights. Plug them in the outlet by the back door. They work.
Which means the front outlet is hosed, the side outlet is dicey, AND the transformer’s probably dead, which I would know if I ran 40 feet of extension cord to the side to test it that way. Which I didn’t do, because I had to go back to Home Depot to get the bulbs I forgot and some mulch.
The only bags of mulch left had been opened slightly and exposed to rain, so all the wood and absorbed its daily minimum requirement of water, and all the bags now weighed about 40 pounds. Drove home. Dragged the bags up the steps, dumped them off, went inside, looked around the house to see if there was anyone around. My mother-in-law was sleeping on the sofa.
Went upstairs, watched two FAIL compilations on YouTube, felt better, then laid down for a nap.
Woke. Microwaved a vindaloo from Trader Joe’s. The instructions said “Stir the lamb gently,” and I thought: maybe some Ravel?
–
Yes, a new template. Evolutions en route. Updates tomorrow. Huzzah, and all that.
Pass it along, if you wish
88 Responses to Mr. Handyman
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Personally the fonts on my browser look fine; in fact, better than before. I use Firefox 4/XP.
As they say on HGTV: “Here’s a tip: If the breaker blows just because you turn the switch on, you have too much load on that circuit. Have an electrical inspector check your wiring.”
This could be a VERY serious problem, affecting possibly the entire house, or if OGH is lucky, just the krep installed by the OIWF contractor. Either way, it is a potential fire waiting to happen… Don’t recall if permits were pulled for the OIWF, but if they were not, a fire burning down Jasperwood may cause issues with an insurance adjuster- don’t want Natalie’ college funds hurt! Those charming older houses sometimes also come with charming but dangeous, and usually undersized knob and tube wiring. House rewiring may be on the menu in addition to foundation work.
It’s not that I don’t like the font. It’s quite lovely. But I don’t want to read it on a computer screen in that size type. I’m using IE8 on corporate XP. (By the way, when I copy a sample into Word, it tells me the font is OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT.
But as others have noted, looks fine on my iPhone.
ooh, browniejr, you sure know how to spend OGH money! but I agree, KnT wiring can be as thin as the 18 gauge I was finding in the folks’ house. 18 gauge iron wire. that’s the same thing as 20 gauge copper, which can carry 2 amps safely. it is a violation of the NEC to connect any new work to KnT, has been for 10 to 15 years.
his garden wonderwire is likely one of two things, seeing as it was done a couple years ago: UG grey Romex, or THHN wire pulled through grey PVC conduit. “direct burial Romex” is not repairable. wires in conduit are. unless you specify, they are likely to pull UG.
if you’re actually digging to 18 inches as you should, it’s a trivial upgrade to do the conduit. might as well drop some 1/4 rebar alongside the conduit so some day, when serious people doing serious work walk around locating underground utilities with their minesweepers, they find your wire.
but then, I learned electrical and electronic stuff as a broadcast brat from looking at no-fail conditions, and honed it in a hospital doing life-critical work, so maybe that’s just me.
but it’s cheaper to do it right once than wrong three or four times.
Also: if the garage roof is leaking, putting planter boxes filled with soil that is wet/ absorbs water in contact with the roof may make it look pretty, but will accelerate the leak problem unless proper drainage/ control of overflow from rain and snow is provided, and contact between roof and soil is not allowed. Wet soil is also HEAVY, and could overload the roof/ cause it to collapse… Is it designed/ structured to be walked on on a regular basis? If so,it may be able to take the planter box weight. If not, you may need to reinforce it.
The house I live in is only about 50 years old but, has lots of electrical and plumbing mysteries / surprises.
One of my favorite was a mysterious popping sound that seem to come from nowhere. After searching all around house I found it coming from the ground near the stock fence. It was old flexible metal conduit once used for an electric fence, buried and corroded. It was arcing and popping from the ground but, did not blow the circuit.
Plenty of comments on the poor font choice. Add mine to the “Ow, my retinas!” column. Can’t comment on the rest of the design since I can no longer focus.
I’m ok with the font, though it is a bit dinky.
I strenuously suggest that OGH obtains the services of a reputable electrician. There is just too much goofy stuff going on with the wiring at Jasperwood to either DIY it or fix it piecemeal.
@bgbear: flaky ground should NOT blow the circuit. it should enable the hot wire to blow the circuit if there is a fault.
difference between you and me is you want to fence stock. I want to fence in stockbrokers.
If the soil is wet, it will kill the plants, too – roots need oxygen, unless you are growing taro. The planter box must drain. if it is not pre-perforated, you can drill holes in the bottom (and provide clearance by setting it on boards) or an inch or so up the side to prevent waterlogging. I do a lot of my veggie container gardening in “Earth Boxes” – you can get a lot of vegetables out of these babies, and they will last many years.
I meant “ground” as in dirt with little blue flashes of arc light and popping coming from the wet soil.
To do any electrical work be sure to wear rubber waders, stand on a rubber bathmat, use Playtex Living Gloves [I bet Jame Gumm loves those], and tie a rubber hose around your waist so your wife can pull you away when the juice starts flowing and paralyzes you.
BTW, putting heavy boxes of dirt that you will soak with water onto a leaky roof is not the best idea. It’s a roof, not a floor.
“Let’s not and say we did”? So that was trendy in the 70s? When I was a very little boy, my older (and moderatly cool) cousin used to say that (circa 1979). I always thought he came up with that himself.
Yeah, the font looks fine on my Mac too, but it is the kind of font that I can see why folks complain about it.
My house has this switch in the bathroom that runs off a clock, and can turn the vent fan on and off at intervals that I set. Well, the clock got old and noisy and since it’s firmly fixed to the wall, it’s REAL noisy. I looked online and found that there are two models of the thing for different wattages, and since they look absolutely freaking identical there’s no way to tell which one I have installed. So I bought a spring-loaded switch instead because Lowes had it on the shelf – one turns it to a preset time and it winds down and shuts off the fan. One of these years I’ll actually install it.
@psfm: nice to know those Intermatic timers are still out there… we kept leaving the outside lights on in front, so I converted the 3-way switches to a pair of 60-min timers.
have not found what I want for the downstairs bathroom yet… the functionality an old Mark-Time darkroom timer would have… where when the light goes on, the timer resets, and when it goes off, the countdown you predialled keeps the fan running.
I suspect I have something that can work in a box in the top of the shed from Ax-Man I bought on a lark 8 to 10 years ago. mechanical timer that triggers from a switch. only problem is, I don’t remember it being auto-resettable.
they stopped making electronic delay relays years ago. I can whip something up from 555 chips and a relay, but it won’t be UL listed.
@swschrad: “…it’s cheaper to do it right once than wrong three or four times.”
Which brings us back to the Gazebo.
Font looks fine on my iMac, too; then again, I frequently use Goudy for my documents at work.
My guess is it’s just Windows/IE being snippy because someone refused to kowtow to their approved fonts.
“Let’s not and say we did.” The first time I heard that is seared – seared in my memory. Fifth grade, Berea, Ohio, an amiable loafer in my class named Scott fired it off. His Pa was ex-military, and it sounded like one of his. That was in 1965. I have no idea why I should remember that, but it’s stuck like many other little tidbits of no consequence.
I just got done checking out the font on every computer in the world and it still looks fine to me.
I just got done remote viewing every comuputer in the parallel universe as well as every computer in the life after death realm and guess what? The font still looks fine to me.
Cheaper, sure – but more fun? although dealing with contractors might provide more blog fodder in the short run,
@Linda Vernon – looks OK to me too, but I had to zoom a little to see it on a netbook. OTOH, I don’t really care about fonts, though OGH certainly does.
In my (relatively new) apartment, the fan in the bathroom is controlled by some sort of fancy programmable electronic timer that is, quite frankly, just about completely useless. Sure, you can program it to turn the fan on and off at precise times each day of the week, but what is that supposed to accomplish in the first place unless you’re an obsessive type who has to take their showers at exactly the same time each day for the exact same length of time? And even if you did want to use the thing, good luck figuring out how to even use it. The only documentation I have for it is a 17-page wall of text in a font so tiny it would be barely readable even if I wasn’t trying to read it off a blurry xerox copy. I recently finally managed to mess with the thing long enough to figure out how to set it so the time was no longer an hour off after DST, but until I develop the kind of neuroses required to find it necessary to micromanage the bathroom exhaust fan, I think I’m just going to leave it at that.
The font is very readable on my iPhone 3GS, if another data point is needed. Love the lobby also.
@Brian Lutz: thought I found a close-enough gizmo at the Orange Despot, in both white and almond. until I read the whole box. for incandescent use only. do not use with motors. so the little touch-switches for 15,30, 60, 90 minutes and then it turns off is not useful.
my 1960s magic-clock thingie is the size of a 1950s telephone, including 7 inches deep. so in an outlet box, fit it will not.
It’s been like this for at least six years. Probably more. The system was set up to demand a PIN for credit and debit, or it was written to ask for PIN no matter what, then accept CANCEL when someone used credit. In other words, the counterintuitive CANCEL command is part of completing the transaction.
That’s because debit transactions have historically been less expensive for the merchant than credit transactions. Virtually all debit cards can be used as credit cards (with a signature instead of PIN, thereby incurring the higher merchant charges), so having the card reader default to debit is a way to subtly encourage those customers using debit cards to use them in “debit mode” as opposed to “credit mode”.
Saves the merchant a few cents per transaction.
Bath Fans: since their function is tied to removing moisture and/ or odors in the bathroom air to prevent mildew/ mold/ fungus, why the devil aren’t these things tied to moisture sensors? It should be a small technical issue to sense moisture from a shower and turn on automatically, then shut off when the moisture level drops below some preset value… Any new fans/ retrofits should be quiet so that if your roof is leaking in the middle of the night because your wife insisted that planter boxes be placed on the roof, it won’t wake her up so she can insist you fix it at 3 in the morning.
Font is OK on larger secondary monitor screen, but doesn’t look good on laptop screen.
Comment link is better at bottom of day’s entry since I prefer to read and comment rather than shoot from the hip and hope my comment fits the context of today’s entry.
Font looks 18th-Cent Lib-Human-Enlightenment-French-Retro. (yuck!) Unless you want to take us back to that quaint, fleeting, stinky moment in time, stick with Arial or whaddever.
I don’t mind the serif type, but anything with an x-height that small is hard to read. Unless it’s twelve points or more.
It’s funny how people are about fonts. I like Galliard a lot and I see it used frequently as a text face in books (a good text face should be like a good radio voice — distinguished without calling too much attention to itself) but my ex-boss’s wife went into advanced conniptions whenever I used it at work.
Sir,
1) Get yourself a multi-meter aka VOM. Electrical troubleshooting made easy!
2) After actually going to the site to leave this comment, and seeing the font, I am deeply grateful that I normally read your output via Google Reader.
Those who dislike serif fonts will be darned to heck.
Bob
The font indeed is OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT; the headings Yanone Kaffesatz or Kaffeklatch or whatever; Google’s open-licensed fonts loaded when the page does. I *think* pre CSS3 browsers will have a rough go of it. BTW, this is the only place where Yanone looks good, well done.
But a suggestion, sir? To hell with the foundation, and pony up for an web license of the Verlag family. We will heart you immensely.
Nice. And, once more OGH makes me laugh. You also make me tired James… You gots way too much energy… Or, maybe it’s because I do for a living what you are trying to do as a pastime.
Anyhoo… pick up a good electrical tester. The kind with the little button on the side and the plastic tip. You stick it in the socket or just touch it to a wire and it tells you if there is juice in there. There are better and more complicated test meters but – then you have to want to know how to use them.
Just get the tester. It’ll save you a world of frustration.
(And, apropos of absolutely nothing, I have a new granddaughter. My last girl is 25 years old and just got married… It’s a new world.)
So glad to see so many font geeks here (remember Korinna, the font of the ’80s?), but this really hurts the eyes on my Dell 26-incher (have to try it at home and see).
Love the font, but it looks like it was scratched onto the screen with a nail file.
And has anyone mentioned having to scroll back up to get to the comments? Imagine, hitting the home key! So 1999!
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who can’t stand serif fonts can just go to Helvetica.
For all those who are confused about having to scroll to the top of the page to find the Comments link: just hit Cancel, then everything will be okay.
And for all those with font-coniptions: you really haven’t been around very long if you expect anything around here to remain unchanged for long. This guy’s the personification of Minnesota weather.
James, you and I have the same inherent inability to understand electricity.
@swschrad: The “do not use with motors” caveat is only relevant if it’s a dimmer switch. If it’s a simple on-off then it should be okay.
The issue is that modern dimmers aren’t rheostat devices; they’re actually little power-control boards that rapidly turn the circuit on and off. This is bad for motors, but is *especially* bad for high-current devices like appliances (vacuums and blenders and power tools.)
Lutron makes a really neat fan-speed / dimmer combo, in a size that can be dropped into an existing switch box (so you don’t have to cut out a bigger hole in the wall.)
““Let’s not and say we did” comes from, of all places, A.A. Milne’s Pooh stories, published in the 1920s. I believe Rabbit uses it to blow off a suggestion of Winnie the P’s. How it entered American hipster vocabulary in the 1970s (and I remember hearing it from the older kids then) is a mystery that bears investigating.”
If dim memory serves, this line was included in Disney’s “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” which came out in the 70′s. It sounds like the phrase had occasional pop culture references in various decades, so it didn’t die totally, but my money’s on Disney being responsible for it becoming widespread in that generation. Just like “I’m dying of not surprise” became moderately common thanks to Aladdin’s genie, aka Robin Williams, in the 90′s.