Everyday Stupidities

There's a joke I tell about the green Energizer rechargeable batteries in my camera: if you charge all four of them and put two in the camera, when you have to change pairs because you've drained the first pair from use the second pair will already be flat from sitting around, so you had better bring some alkalines also. That got a little annoying, it was like both pairs have an expiration date of ten days no matter whether they were ever tapped. So after asking my fellow local photographers what the best rechargeables are and doing a little reading online, I've invested in some Sanyo Eneloop AA's, which if fully charged and left alone at room temperature will still have 85% of their charge left one year later. Another investment was an HP Deskjet D4260 printer, replacing that Lexmark-made Canon printer which hasn't done a job right in over two years. Once I figured out that horizontal on the screen really means you put the photo paper in vertically and found out Preview is your friend because the software has this nasty habit of changing all your high-quality photo printing settings back to regular full-page settings and wanting to print on just 3" x 4" of a 4" x 6" paper when all settings are set to (and are displaying the test image as) filling the paper, all was well. I encountered some serious stupidity with my house wiring yesterday by surprise. My wife and I were about to hit some long-overdue home projects (her: painting the lavendar touch-ups on the accent wall cran-plum; me: stripping some paint and varnish off the kitchen cabinet doors) and I flipped the light switch in the diningroom... and half the lights in the house went out. And the breaker did not trip. I have now learned how to take the panel out of the breaker box and remove a breaker switch, a valuable skill, but the switch wasn't defective. It wasn't until that night that I found out where the problem was: The wiring goes from the breaker box to the inside of the light fixture in the mudroom, where it splits to the porch light ahead and the rest of the lights on that side of the house (kitchen, diningroom, bathroom, master bedroom, and my computer's socket). The mudroom light wasn't coming on, yet the porchlight was. Predictably, this morning when I opened up the light fixture to look for loose wire and test voltages, ding, suddenly the light and the rest of the circuit works. I have no idea how some wires under a cap (in a light that wasn't on at the time) could act like a breaker but, hey, whatever, all is well now. Work seems to be okay, but then again I worked on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, when the street traffic to work was way dead and the call traffic at work was even deader. That kind of goodness can't last (said 11 hours before my Monday morning shift). My Thanksgiving otherwise was tolerable -- I don't consider the lettuce and cucumber sandwiches with one slice of meat each from Subway, courtesy of the agency, a "feast" -- and on Saturday my bride made a turkey and some fixin's so I didn't go without much. I even had my cranberry sauce on Sunday: I dropped a can of Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash on my floor and it did precisely that, it splashed cranberry all over (and under) the stack of cabinet doors; the 'sauce' comes in because despite my efforts to wipe the floor clean with a wet rag I noticed in my stocking feet that the linoleum is a little tacky. There's probably more or something actually useful to say but there's always later.