Problem: If I turn on the overhead light in the bedroom, it smells like an electrical fire is about to start.
Solution: power down everything in the room, then turn things back on one at a time and monitor the results in an effort to see what, exactly might be overloading the wiring. Turns out it’s the light itself, not the “electrician’s nightmare” under my desk. Whew–didn’t really want to move the nightmare that is the desk anyway.
Project: Replace light fixture, hope that was the problem and we don’t need to get someone to re-wire the whole fucking house.
Actual solution: Remove bulb in preparation for replacing fixture. Discover scorched base with scary-looking burnt spot that still smells like…ozone. Kick self in arse for not remembering that self-ballasted CF bulbs have…ballasts. Ballasts that can fail, especially in old bulbs. Replace bulb with new one. No flicker, no ozone…end of project.
Problem: Indoor cat likes outdoor air and won’t STFU unless Deh-day is home to pet him. Deh-day works 35 miles away five days a week. It is November, and 3rd St. doesn’t need to be heated, at least not at my expense. I am being driven insane by the cat.
Solution: Give cat a “kitteh observation post” in his favourite window.
Project: Build kitteh observation post. Properly insulated and with a built-in cat flap, the cat can come and go as he pleases, and will…STFU.
Actual solution: PetSafe Cat Veranda. Slightly more expensive than building one (properly), but much less work. Have to order it, but can live with cat until it arrives.
Problem: P can play HL2 only between BSODs. Not getting a new computer until tax time in spring.
Solution: Fix the old one. Duh!
Project: First of all, dust it because if those fans are moving any amount of air, I’ll eat the goddamned dust bunnies with Tabasco sauce. Holy Christ, it’s scary in there. If you smoke around computers, you absolutely, positively cannot leave them un-cleaned for more than a short time. “Over a year” is not a short time. Ever heard the saying about the shoemaker’s children? Yeah…that.
Actual solution: Clean it, of course, but tell the wife it’s something you can “do together” (she knows what you really mean, but she’ll pretend she doesn’t), then say, “You do three things and I’ll do the rest, okay?” Wife gets a bottle of anhydrous alcohol, a box of Q-tips, an old toothbrush, one of those little round disposable “denture cleaning brushes”, a heatsink that has more tar-encrusted dusty hair than the cat, and a couple of fans that are so gunked with black-brown “mystery stuff” that they barely even move. Go downstairs, fire up the compressor, then stand there and wait until the pressure is up enough that you can blow out the dust. Return in five minutes, your part of the job done. Stand there and watch the wife cleaning the most disgusting gunk imaginable out of the heatsink and fans. When she’s finished and the brown stuff won’t wash off her hands even with dish detergent, offer her automotive hand cleaner. Ask wife for thermal paste, put heatsink and fans back in place. Ask wife to put screws in because light is poor and you’re half-drunk, so you can’t see the holes. Play HL2, crash-free. 🙂
Neither a problem nor a solution, and not a project, either, but….WTF? It’s called “Squirt” (technically Diet Squirt…guess Diet Bukkake was taken), which is quasi-obscene in itself, but it’s also…white? Um…heh. Tastes okay, though…citrus-y.
I kept L. up waaaaay too late again…like ten till three his time. He always says he has “free will”, and he’s right–he’s a grown man and could leave at any time with nothing more than a click of the mouse–but at the same time, he does like me, and I do know that, and I don’t exactly try too hard to get him off to bed when he should be going. That one’s a treasure, he is.
