The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Rarely do I see the light as salvation, most times I see it as a train headed directly toward me.

How Many People Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb In My House?
When I mused yesterday about replacing the garbage disposal I made an off-handed remark about how things in my house are always more difficult to replace than they should be. Little did I know just how prescient I was.

When I arrived home last night I set out to perform the simple task of replacing the dead compact fluorescent bulb in my kitchen which died the other day. I grabbed a new CF bulb from my collection but quickly realized that this one was too large for the fixture. From there I recovered a known-working bulb from another fixture, placed the glass enclosure over it, flipped the switch and was dejected to not see it illuminate. Only slightly daunted I went and fetched a seemingly-new incandescent bulb from my collection and placed it into this fixture. This time I chose to wait for success before affixing the glass enclosure, and was completely dejected when this bulb didn’t illuminate either.

Could this problem be related to the garbage disposal problem? I believe they are on the same circuit, though the light over the sink is as well and it works without difficulty.

I forced myself into the attic to make sure that there wasn’t a glaring wire problem which may have been caused by one of my previous rodent residents but did not see and signs of major disturbance.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

ITP Flickr Pic
This is how my bookcase looked at the end of the wine drinking night also known as the W(h)ine and Regift party.
What Drunks Do With Poseable Mannequins
I love my poseable mannequins. Tomorrow you just might see something related to another of my 2010 projects.

Walk This Way
Yesterday I did something that I hope to do more often. With the weather being almost perfect and me needing a break from my cubicle I went for a walk. After all was said and done I’d covered a little more than two miles at a leisurely pace. Even though I was strolling around the traffic / pollution nightmare known as Perimeter Mall I had my iPod and was loving the walk.

Oh, I and realized that I forgot to credit myself for the four miles of hashing that I did on Sunday.

Socket To Me
WARNING! : Nerd-Speak Ahead

Today I’ll be spending my day digging into Linux sockets in order to correct a problem I’m having with my code. It seems that my mini server code is crapping out on asynchronous SOAP calls after forking a new process.

I warned you that this would be nerdy….

So today I’m going to figure out the reason for this and attempt to replace the forking process with a ThreadPool implementation that comes along with the UPnP library that I’m using.

If that made even a hint of sense to you and have any tips please leave them in a comment. 🙂

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – flummoxed
Current Music – listening to the “Sound Opinions” podcast
Website Of The Day – Unfortunately Slice The Pie has nothing to do with dessert; fortunately it looks like an interesting site for musical artists.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – walking, 2 miles
Morning Weigh-In – 197.4 pounds
Pages Of 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die Read – 37

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 6 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Pushups – 20, Situps – 50
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 2 (12*)
Vegetarian Days – 1, Carnivorous Days – 17
Marta Rides – 0
* – because I stripped the bed instead of making the bed

January Goals
– Not get fired from my job

2010 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 185 pounds (starting weight was 198 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
– Earn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalapeño Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Enter no fewer than three photographic competitions / gallery showings
– Get the Black Sheep stats out of Excel and online
– Ride in no fewer than two 50 mile or 50K bike rides

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in PHP and CSS
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]

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6 Responses to The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

  1. Steve says:

    I thought you said when you flip the switch on the disposal, the motor hummed… if that is the case, then there is power to it. Very unlikely they wired it and the light to the same breaker. Are other outlets on the counter also not working? Have you checked the breakers? The light could also be a loose wire at the fixture.

    -FP

  2. Barb says:

    or, the whole fixture just died. how old is it?

  3. Yes, the garbage disposal did hum, therefore I know there is some power getting to it.

    To say my house is “curiously wired” is an understatement. I was in no mood to do more investigation last night. In the next few days I’ll completely figure out which circuits control all of the kitchen’s outlets and switches (I have a listing I made back in 1999 to which I’ll refer first). I’ll probably also take the faceplate off the switch and have a gander at its internals.

    The fixture could possibly be as old as 1956/1957 when my house was built. Curiously there is a square marking on the ceiling surrounding the round glass enclosure which may mean that the current kitchen lighting was a later addition.

  4. martha says:

    I’ve got one of those electical testing things somewhere. You can use it to see if there is power to the fixture (and other outlets) and narrow down the problem. All else fails there is Dave W.

    I really need to make myself take a break at lunch. I just sit at my desk for 8 hours (including lunch)…it takes a toll. I’m really considering bringing my balance ball to the office to use as a desk chair as well.

  5. Vic says:

    Home projects aside, I thought you’d like this:

    http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004157.php

  6. Thanks Vic.

    I’ve been following David Hobby (a fellow Gator) for a little while. I’m glad to see his work get referenced and expanded by others.

Comments are closed.