| managed to blow out half the power in my apartment today while fiddling with the computer wires. i suppose i should consider it a blessing as i have only one fuse for the entire apartment so having any power is a minor miracle. so what exactly did i do then? four outlets no longer work. when i call an electrician tomorrow assuming my landlord is still atoning for his sins and doesnt show up at his office, what should i tell them ive done, other than forsake god?
crossed wire / shorts out, blows fuse?
thanks. i just realized though that they cant do anything until hes around because they wont be able to access the fuse box. i cant recall if hes generally inaccessible until after yom kippur. i just hope i dont lose all my power in the interim.
If you have only one fuse, then you haven't blown the fuse. A friend had a similar problem recently during a kitchen remodel. One of the copper power feeds had a nick in it that went undetected for 40 years until he shorted power. The wire acted like a fuse at the nick point. Depending on how clean/dirty the power distribution is, it could be something like that or a problem at a wirenut or similar joint.
yeeeeeehaaaaww!!
blew out one more outlet this morning, the last remaining one in whatever this room this is. i would call it a dining room but theres no actual table. and its not really a office because that would require a desk. and its certainly not the tv room despite the tv. lets just call it my wreck room even though the whole apartment is a wreck.
so as my friend, lets call him phinneas j. hardscrabble, can attest getting anything fixed via the landlord is a multistep process. phinneas sat on the couch in the less wrecked wreck room completely untransfixed by the football highlights flickering by on the tube (it still has tubes, right?) as i played Lets Let The Landlord Waste My Time Before He Has To Call In A Professional. this is not some simple affair like a 20 inning baseball game, its more like one of those two week long cricket matches that takes place between india and pakistan when 40 people in the stands die from a suicide bombing but where the casualties have been exaggerated to include all those people that have taken their own life due to boredom, or from the realization that theyve just spent two weeks of their meaningless lives watching cricket.
and im like one of those spectators, i would hang myself right now if i thought the ceiling wouldnt fall in on me in the process which would require me to repeat the cycle of landlord hopscotch im currently engaged in for another two weeks in order to patch the hole. and lets not forget its the high holidays, so that might delay it another week. meanwhile im exposed to my upstairs neighbors shrieking laughter through the hole in the ceiling, which in itself could send me over the edge, or at least out the window. but i wouldnt want to give anyone the sort of satisfaction of thinking that they could annoy me to death. and also, whod be here to get the ceiling fixed much less shepherd the electricity back to good health?
so yes, phinneas j. hardscrabble can attest to the ludicrazy circumstances i must confront in order to set the wheels of progress in motion though he pretends to be engaged with the goings on on the teley and not to my conversation with the guileful owner. i try to perform some renters jew-jitsu on the lord of the manor but he is far too wiley a player to be taken in by my unimaginative maneuvers. i ask perchance for some more power as long as we have an electrician engaged. he parries with a price tag in the thousands. i ask merely for an estimate. he contends that the electric company may shackle him in the tower of london for unseen and unthinkable acts of malfeseance. who knows what violations they could find, indeed! i shudder to even consider the possibilities! and this from a holocaust survivor. if he is frightened beyond his wits, than what of the rest of us? but i soldier on, knowing this might be my best last chance to move this immovable object, to pull the sword from the stone and proclaim my camelot. but like any great chess master, he is many moves ahead of a novice such as myself. before i can even formulate a new line of attack, hes boxed me in, or rather, hes carpet bombed the entire apartment with an unassailable mixed metaphor, which before ive even had time to unravel has felled me where i stood. i stand in awe of that Can Of Pandora knowing full well that should i venture to the kitchen to fetch an opener and possess the temerity and lack of good sense to unleash its furies upon this world, that i alone would be responsible for the havoc it would most assuredly wreak. so you can see how well and good i had been thrashed by this fearsome opponent. best i pay him his due and let the process run its course. why else have a process if you dont let it course?
anyway, i could tell you tales of another day wasted, or of my cheap extension cord which i found melted to a bloody pulp, but i havent the patience. yet still i may be rewarded for my earlier fortitude as i was told a well and true electrician has been summoned and is expected in the hours before the light dims. so by morning if all goes well, there may be coffee and toast for all, but only enough power to run one machine at a time. huzzah?
Just make sure you close the barn door before another bird in the bush gets crooked as a dog's hind leg, is my advice to you.
Don't you mean crooked as a kitten?
|
- dave 9-14-2007 12:00 am
crossed wire / shorts out, blows fuse?
- bill 9-14-2007 12:05 am
thanks. i just realized though that they cant do anything until hes around because they wont be able to access the fuse box. i cant recall if hes generally inaccessible until after yom kippur. i just hope i dont lose all my power in the interim.
- dave 9-14-2007 12:38 am
If you have only one fuse, then you haven't blown the fuse. A friend had a similar problem recently during a kitchen remodel. One of the copper power feeds had a nick in it that went undetected for 40 years until he shorted power. The wire acted like a fuse at the nick point. Depending on how clean/dirty the power distribution is, it could be something like that or a problem at a wirenut or similar joint.
- mark 9-14-2007 2:26 am
yeeeeeehaaaaww!!
blew out one more outlet this morning, the last remaining one in whatever this room this is. i would call it a dining room but theres no actual table. and its not really a office because that would require a desk. and its certainly not the tv room despite the tv. lets just call it my wreck room even though the whole apartment is a wreck.
so as my friend, lets call him phinneas j. hardscrabble, can attest getting anything fixed via the landlord is a multistep process. phinneas sat on the couch in the less wrecked wreck room completely untransfixed by the football highlights flickering by on the tube (it still has tubes, right?) as i played Lets Let The Landlord Waste My Time Before He Has To Call In A Professional. this is not some simple affair like a 20 inning baseball game, its more like one of those two week long cricket matches that takes place between india and pakistan when 40 people in the stands die from a suicide bombing but where the casualties have been exaggerated to include all those people that have taken their own life due to boredom, or from the realization that theyve just spent two weeks of their meaningless lives watching cricket.
and im like one of those spectators, i would hang myself right now if i thought the ceiling wouldnt fall in on me in the process which would require me to repeat the cycle of landlord hopscotch im currently engaged in for another two weeks in order to patch the hole. and lets not forget its the high holidays, so that might delay it another week. meanwhile im exposed to my upstairs neighbors shrieking laughter through the hole in the ceiling, which in itself could send me over the edge, or at least out the window. but i wouldnt want to give anyone the sort of satisfaction of thinking that they could annoy me to death. and also, whod be here to get the ceiling fixed much less shepherd the electricity back to good health?
so yes, phinneas j. hardscrabble can attest to the ludicrazy circumstances i must confront in order to set the wheels of progress in motion though he pretends to be engaged with the goings on on the teley and not to my conversation with the guileful owner. i try to perform some renters jew-jitsu on the lord of the manor but he is far too wiley a player to be taken in by my unimaginative maneuvers. i ask perchance for some more power as long as we have an electrician engaged. he parries with a price tag in the thousands. i ask merely for an estimate. he contends that the electric company may shackle him in the tower of london for unseen and unthinkable acts of malfeseance. who knows what violations they could find, indeed! i shudder to even consider the possibilities! and this from a holocaust survivor. if he is frightened beyond his wits, than what of the rest of us? but i soldier on, knowing this might be my best last chance to move this immovable object, to pull the sword from the stone and proclaim my camelot. but like any great chess master, he is many moves ahead of a novice such as myself. before i can even formulate a new line of attack, hes boxed me in, or rather, hes carpet bombed the entire apartment with an unassailable mixed metaphor, which before ive even had time to unravel has felled me where i stood. i stand in awe of that Can Of Pandora knowing full well that should i venture to the kitchen to fetch an opener and possess the temerity and lack of good sense to unleash its furies upon this world, that i alone would be responsible for the havoc it would most assuredly wreak. so you can see how well and good i had been thrashed by this fearsome opponent. best i pay him his due and let the process run its course. why else have a process if you dont let it course?
anyway, i could tell you tales of another day wasted, or of my cheap extension cord which i found melted to a bloody pulp, but i havent the patience. yet still i may be rewarded for my earlier fortitude as i was told a well and true electrician has been summoned and is expected in the hours before the light dims. so by morning if all goes well, there may be coffee and toast for all, but only enough power to run one machine at a time. huzzah?
- dave 9-20-2007 9:02 pm
Just make sure you close the barn door before another bird in the bush gets crooked as a dog's hind leg, is my advice to you.
- jimlouis 9-21-2007 12:27 am
Don't you mean crooked as a kitten?
- alex 9-21-2007 12:31 am