Today’s holiday should not only occur much more often, it would have helped tremendously if it had at least popped up a day earlier. Today is Never Assume That Someone Else Did It Correctly Day, the day when we carefully consider projects, repairs, upgrades, and the like from the standpoint that maybe the person before you was a nitwit. Since I’m in the middle of home projects right now (a small part of this balanced breakfast why I’m not posting much,) as I said, this would have come in handier yesterday while I was wiring up a new switch, and saved me a bit of headache checking connections when things didn’t work, but I suppose it’s my fault for starting such a thing before the actual holiday.
Of course, it’s probably better to assume every project day is this holiday – I know I’ve both been bitten (by failing to search for the spoor of the addlebrained handyman,) and saved a lot of trouble by double-checking the details first. I could have checked the polarity of the incoming wires with a multi-tester before replacing the switch, but I tend to kill the power before even opening a cover plate, to avoid accidents. This is largely due to, as an adolescent, being around my dad when he decided to wire a light switch without turning off the breaker; “It’s okay as long as you’re careful,” a phrase akin to, “Are you filming this?” right before an xtremekooldood stunt. A minute or so after uttering this dismissal, I heard a sharp crack! and something skittered across the floor past my feet. I jerked around to see my dad examining the tip of the screwdriver, which was considerably shorter and no longer able to drive screws; the thing that had danced past me was a portion of the tip, blown off by a 120v20a current when he inadvertently shorted the screwdriver across the terminals. I immediately went down and shut off the breaker.
Another little tip for the DIYer: If you’re tempted to change something from standard practices or rules, don’t. But if you have to, mark things clearly in the assumption that the next person working on this will not be you (or even, that you may have forgotten doing this by that time.)
The various projects taking up my time have been a broad spectrum of experiences, ranging from, “That was a lot easier than expected,” to, [Sigh] “Okay, I’m running down to the hardware store again, be back shortly.” I’m not going to mention injuries, because so far there have been nothing but trivial ones, and I don’t want to jinx things – yes, I’m into critical thinking, and yes, I still think posting any gloating is just asking for trouble. So I’m keeping mum. And photographically, not a damn thing has been happening – it’s been cold, and the autumn colors have largely gone away, so I’m not motivated to even try. Once past a couple of tasks here, I’ll dig up something of interest (to me at least – not necessarily to anyone else, if the visitation stats are the slightest indication.) So, if you’re actually here, I will have something new within a day or three. Meanwhile you can check the ‘Favorites‘ tab to see just how untrustworthy my personal judgment is.