6 Jul
2004
6 Jul
'04
4:15 a.m.
Rumor has it that Tony Duell may have mentioned these words:
If he hasn't yet... :-/
went out.
After I pried myself off the ceiling I went after the so and so
electrician that had told me that the power was off. He merely said "let
that be a lesson, allways check the breakers yourself". I've never
frogotten that!
If he did this as a joke, or to teach you a lesson, then it's not funny,
and that idiot should be LARTed before he kills somebody. The mains
(certainly not 240V mains, but 110V can be lethal too) is not a suitable
subject for practical jokes.
On the other hand I do agree that you should always check the power is
turned off yourself. If I was working with _anyone_ else I'd always
check. And while I'd never say I'd turned the power off if I hadn't, I'd
expect you to check. I certainly wouldn't be offended if you did.
Nor would I... in fact, even a simple thing like "locking the store at
nite" is triple- and quadruple-checked each nite, and I've been known to
get offended when someone *doesn't* double-check my work. ;-)
Now here's *my* brainfart for the week:
My RadioShack multimeter (computerized mongothingy with RS-232 &
everything) decided it didn't want to measure voltage anymore. It did
everything else fine[1] so I decided I was gonna have a hand at tearing the
thing apart to see what the heck is going on. (It's probably one of three
things I own that I've not yet taken apart yet.) So I took it *all* the way
apart. Every screw in it was out, things in 20 pieces, didn't bother to
mark the alignment of the selector wheel internally, so I had to put it
back together twice to get that mapped out where it should be, finally got
it realigned & back together, went to test it, and it still didn't work.
So, then I think: Waitaminit, dumbass! That outlet that the wallwart is
plugged into is a bit flakey, maybe there's no voltage to measure! So I
grab a standard alkaline cell, and yea, I get 1.5 volts. So I test a *known
working* 12v wallwart - still nothing. Odd... then I say to myself...
Self: When's the last time you changed the battery in this darned thing???
I replaced the 9v battery, and everything worked fine![2]
Did I feel stupid? Yea... but I got over it quickly, as I was happy it was
working again -- and now I know what the innards of the thing look like, in
case the next time the problems not so simple...
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] including measuring resistance, which is usually the first thing to go
on a low battery condition...
[2] And Tony says you can never fix anything right by just partswapping... ;^>
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | JC: "Like those people in
Celeronville!"
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Me: "Don't you mean Silicon Valley???"
zmerch(a)30below.com | JC: "Yea, that's the place!"
| JC == Jeremy Christian