Whatever, we've got company, let's put him to work. What can we do? Well, for starters there's that floodlight over the driveway that's been burned out for a couple of days (weeks? months? years? how about friggin' decades?). Last time I worked on this, I wasn't getting any juice to the fixture. It was one of those "there's nothing wrong, but it doesn't work" situations. And then the inside of the attic where the light is mounted got plastered over, and, well, yeah, that kind of put paid to that project.
But today we got out the ladder (substitute 'O-man' for 'we' whenever the story includes someone actually doing something). We climbed the ladder, replaced the bulb, and boom! 500 Watts of halogen in your face! (I just learned that Halogen is spelled like halo, so halogen is like an abbreviation for 'halo generator', or maybe 'halo genesis' if you're into Latin.) The light switch has been sitting on 'ON' all this time. Probably should have checked beforehand. On the other hand, while turning the switch off beforehand would have eliminated the smack-in-the-face, it would have meant doubling the effort, as some would have had to:
- run up the stairs to turn off the switch.
- run back down the stairs to steady the ladder, while
- his partner climbs the ladder, replaces the bulb,
- climbs down.
- Now number one runs back up the stairs and turns the switch on.
- His parter confirms that the light is on, but number one can't really see it,
- so he runs back downstairs to see that the light is working,
- runs upstairs to turn off the light
- runs back downstairs to acclamation and celebration!
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| Halogen 500 Watt floodlight bulb after all the Watts escaped. |
Down, but not out, we ventured once more into the breach, climbed the ladder (after making sure the switch was off), and replaced the bulb. I left it on while my wife and I went to Amelia's for dinner this evening and it was still on when we got back, so maybe it's fixed.
The rain sensor is our next project. A couple years (decades?) ago, I replaced the original irrigation timer with a fancy new Rain Bird SST 600s. This new timer came with a 'sensor' that allowed the machine to adjust the watering cycle based on the weather. The old timer worked fine, it was an economy model and the numbers on the switches never aligned with the switch position. It was just kind of annoying. Then a couple people recommended these new fangled gizmos, so I let myself get talked into it.
Knowing how much the time the sprinklers are set to run is really kind of pointless because all you can do is adjust the time, but nobody really knows what a 'good' time is, so you have to experiment. Mostly it involves picking a random number and then letting it run for a few days (weeks? months?) until you notice that the lawn is waterlogged or turning brown. I really don't even need to notice, my wife or Rob Benton, our lawn guy, will make it a point to inform me. Kind of an odd situation. I am become Keeper of the Irrigation Timer!
Anyway, a red light appeared on the timer's control panel indicating the sensor was out of whack. We took it down, cleaned it and put it back and it seems to be working. It appears to use a couple of CC's of cork on a spring scale to measure the rain and a thermistor to measure temperature. The spring scale looks like it uses touch-pad technology to measure the deflection of the scale. Nothing but a nylon stylus sliding over some pads on the circuit board.
Now there's the garage door keypad. This thing has been trouble since day one, well day ten maybe. I had a lot of trouble finding one that would work, and then when I did, I found I had to reprogram it several times to get it to work. I quickly got tired of that program and just gave up on it. Nobody uses it, so it doesn't really matter. But gol durn it, I paid good money for that gizmo, it ought to do its job. So we open it up and poke and prod and look up the instructions on the Internet and reprogram it and it seems to be working. I think the instructions might be better than the ones that came with it.
We've done so well, maybe we should reward ourselves with a little basketball. Um, the ball's a little flat. That's okay, I've got a little 12 volt compressor we can use to pump it up. Except it plugs into the cigarette lighter in the car and we aren't getting any power. Check the fuses for both the cigarette lighter and the auxiliary power outlet and they are both blown. What the heck was the previous owner doing that he blew both fuses? I know, something shorted and the first blew, so since his machine died, he assumed the problem was with the outlet, so he plugged his machine into the second outlet and blew that one too. But then he crashed the car so it all evened out.
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| Inflation No side hole |
Needles With side hole |
We get new fuses, but now we have another problem. Hook up the compressor to the car, attach the needle to the nozzle, insert said needle into ball, turn on the power and pressure immediately builds to infinite (as indicated by the gauge), but the ball isn't getting any fuller. Examination of the needle reveals that it is only a hollow tube. Conventional inflation needles (at any rate, the ones I am familiar with) have a blunt, solid tip and a hole in the side of the tube a fraction of an inch from the tip of the tube. I find such a needle hiding in the secret compartment on the bottom of the compressor. Correct needle works and the ball inflates. One fat old man and one whippersnapper square off on the court. My first dozen shots were all airballs. All that could be said was that they were headed in the general direction of the basket. After I warmed up a bit I made a couple of good, on the move shots. Impressed myself, I did. But that lasted maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I was shot.
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