Sunday, August 15, 2010

Eclectical Electrical Enigmas

The house I live in has issues. It's completely understandable really, given the place is just over 100 years old. So good you'll not look when 100 years you reach. Hell, I'm knocking on 34 and feel like I'm falling apart. Apparently my apartment and me have a similar wiring issue going on. Mine has to do with the sciatic nerve (which apparently is now being compressed against the bone by recent muscular developments and causing some discomfort... so my trainer thinks.) WebMD says I either have bone marrow cancer or the same sciatic issue. Let's go with option 2. The cure.. well, it'll go away on it's own eventually, and I should stretch more.

Now the house... last night I was about to cook me a nice chicken breast on my handy Foreman grill and alas.. no power. But the fridge is running and the lights are on. But the outlets in the kitchen were dead. So instead of dragging the grill and microwave (reheat some veggies) into the living room, i elected for a detour on the way to work and grab a grilled chicken and pesto sammich.

I've had electrical issues a in my new abode from time to time. I think the place was initially wired by Thomas Edison, who I can only guess became distracted by all the inventing he had to do and left the finishing work to Rube Goldberg, who worked of wiring diagrams drawn up by M.C. Escher.

After resetting all the GFI outlets, and flipping the breakers on box #1 in the attic, no luck. The attic breaker box has four breakers in it, two which seem to control nothing. The other two split the load equally between the refrigerator on one and everything else on the other. That seems fair and practical. Every now and then the A/C will trip the "everything else" breaker my place is plunged into darkness or, even worse, hotness. But the fridge still works.

OK, I get it, it's 100year old house and they had no idea in a century people were going to have giant insulted boxes for cooling food, smaller less insulted boxes for heating it back up, big metallic contraptions for washing and drying clothes (and the builders would probably pummel for bitching about how "doing laundry" sucks without the effort of a washboard, bucket, and clothes line), or a 42" flat screen HDTV with accompanying surround sound DVD/iPod/Stereo system. How some one building a house in 1908 didn't plan for this sort of thing just shows severe shortsightedness.

Anyways, back to the problem at hand... no power from the outlets. Today, when I woke up I texted my one of my landlords about the issue, who returned a call immediately. We went through the problems and what I had already done. He suggested I check the other 2 breaker boxes.... excuse me?? There's two more breaker boxes to my apartment?? Yes... one outside and one in the basement. Like I mentioned, M.C. Escher and Mr. Goldberg did a bang up job on the wiring. Mick (or Nick, 2 out of 3 of my landlords are identical twins and I'm never really sure which one I'm talking to) said he'd be over in a bit to check it out. About 3 minutes after the first call, Mick (or Nick) called back and suggested I check with the girls downstairs to see the basement fuse box. OK, well... this is going to require me to be at least partially presentable. And I had to the shower and get dressed.

As a result of 3 seasons of drum corps, I can be in and out of a shower in like 5 minutes and dressed ready to go. In that time, Mick (or Nick) had called back. Turns out he had just called the downstairs girls and they had indeed found a tripped breaker. Woohoo, I had microwave power back.

But I'm left confused about why one breaker in the Attic would control almost everything, but one in the basement would control kitchen outlets. And no doubt there's a few more breakers down there controlling something. Or hell, maybe not... maybe they just wired the kitchen outlets through the basement and everything else is on the upstairs cirtcuit, which is controlled via a relay on the outside breaker box.

It's fun little facts like this that make living in an old house both entertaining and annoying. Luckily, I have first time landlords who seem to be bending over backwards whenever I call with a problem. Mind you, this is only the second one I've ever called about, the last being a leaky roof. Turned out it was the furnace drain for condensation was frozen and the pan was overflowing. But Mick (or Nick) came rolling over at 10 PM to check it out (on cold January night) after I told them it could probably wait till the next day.

I was once told my place had character and personality... yeah that's it.

With all the personality in my house, you'd think I'd be really creative and write these literary masterpieces there. Turns out, not so much. I'm not sure if it's the intelligence sapping wall sized HDTV or the general air of clutter and messiness that stifles my creativity there. So, instead of cleaning and turning off the TV, I leave the place. It's a nice 1/2 mile walk to the corner coffee shop. It'd be nicer without the oppressive heat, but I just look forward to the large ice coffee and cold water. And here I sit looking around at the eclecticness of the little place. It's nice to live in a neighborhood where no one really seems to fit in. The cross section of people in here now vary form the "hippyesque" guy with the full scraggly beard and dreads to the almost yuppyish guys in khaki shorts and polos. Luckily no collars are popped. Mostly its just sandals, T-shirts, and tattoos all around. The majority of laptops on the tables were brought to you by Mr. Jobs and his folks in Cupertino (via China). Except for the girl in front of me who's stuck an Apple sticker on her PC netbook... poser!

In other news, the Austrian wrote today and told us he had accepted the job in the desert. So, it looks like I'm not packing my bags for a big move. I'm a little disappointed not only because I'm not setting of a grand Arabian adventure, but also not being informed by said company of the results. It's not unique to them, I've been through that before. Even asking to please let me know either way. Inconsiderate.

So, looks like it's a while longer living with bad wiring and draftiness in Kentucky. I spent this weekend here in town partly for a break in traveling (and the accompanying spending) and partly because I agreed to be on call to work Monday morning. I ended up picking up a shift for the injured roommate last night. In a departure from the usual viewing fare of Fox News or the Weather Channel (I'm not sure which one becomes more mind numbing after 8 hours, at least the Weather Channel just tells me the weather, and not what I should think about it) we were treated to a new version of Sherlock Holmes. It's a great show that will be appearing on PBS soon (we had bootlegged BBC DVD's), and too bad I was kind of pissed off at the suspenseful ending to the last episode since there's no plans at this time to keep producing more episodes.

So, next on the agenda... Labor Day weekend I'm making the trip to ATL for DragonCon and what I'm thinking may be the last time I see Gracathan before they ship off to the jungles of Vietnam. I'm also working on getting together a trip over to visit during the winter. It's sort of a pain to get to Saigon these days, probably because it's called Ho Chi Minh City now and for some reason there's not a lot of direct flights between here and there... some historical cultural differences I think. And I'm looking at planning a March jaunt to South America. The Lonely Planet South America on a Shoestring looks like the guide of choice. For some reason when I tell people I'm thinking of bussing from Santiago to Ushuaia and back up to Buenos Aries (And telling them these places are indeed not in Texas or New Mexico) they always look at me like I'm growing a fourth foot out of my forehead (The third foot looks came when I told people I was thinking of moving to Dubai... well they thought I was nuts only after again explaining geography and where Dubai is located). Yeah, so maybe I'm a little crazy... keeps me from going insane.

Well, i think that's enough for today. I need to find some sustenance and wait for the call to work tomorrow. Later people.

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