Due to some technical problems it will probably be several days before I am able to post a new entry. I will do my best to keep up with you while I’m waiting to be able to post again.
Posts Tagged ‘Frustration’
Technical Problems
August 9, 2010The Joys of Home Ownership
July 28, 2009
I usually take part in the My World meme on Tuesday, but I’m skipping this week.
When I woke up yesterday (Monday) morning, I had my day all planned out. The front lawn needed mowing, there were weeds in a periwinkle bed that needed to be pulled, and I had more work to do on a retaining wall I’m building along the road. With luck I could get much of that work done before it got uncomfortably hot outside (summer has returned to the Plateau).
Then I went into the kitchen and turned on the lights . . . only half of them came on. My day went down hill from there.
Don’t get me wrong — I really like our house and think it is just about perfect. But the lighting in the kitchen is one thing that I would change if I could. We have two eight-foot long fluorescent light fixtures in the kitchen, above a drop-down ceiling composed of plastic ‘screens’. To get to the fixtures the first thing that needs to be done is remove some of the screens.
I hoped against hope that the problem was just a bad bulb, but switching bulbs between the fixture that worked and the fixture that didn’t work produced no change. The bulbs were fine.
The next possibility was a bad ballast. We’ve had to replace the fixtures since we’ve lived here and we got our replacement fixtures at Lowe’s. So we wrote down all the numbers we could find on the old ballast and headed to Lowe’s. Of course the old ballast was no longer available, so we purchased an ‘equivalent’ ballast and headed back home.
I was able to get the new ballast into the fixture without any problems, but that’s when I noticed that the wires weren’t long enough to reach the two ends of the fixture. Much experimentation showed that there was no way I could attach the ballast to the fixture (necessary to ground the ballast) and get the wires to reach both ends of fixture. So I did some splicing, taped all the splices well, and put everything back together. I put the bulbs back into the fixture and flipped the switch. All the lights came on . . . FINALLY!!! Now all I had to do was put the drop-down ceiling back.
Of course once that was done, the day was practically over. Needless to say, I didn’t get much done on that list I had in mind when I woke up.
Maybe we should consider renting.
A Windy Day on the Plateau
December 10, 2008
The flag at our house in the wind. December 9, 2008.
Yesterday was very windy up here on the Plateau. We had been warned that an approaching front would bring wind and (hopefully) some rain. We could definitely use the rain.
The wind arrived in the early morning, as you can tell from the photo above. We could hear the wind chimes clanging and every once in a while there was a ‘thump’ as something hit the house. But we were taking everything is stride until suddenly the power went out.
Fortunately it was light enough in the living room for us to do our daily devotions without any electricity. Surely the power would be back on by the time we finished. We finished our devotions, but the power was still off. I don’t think we realize how much we depend on electricity until we lose it. Fortunately I love to read and that doesn’t require electricity as long as it’s light enough.
After about an hour the power came back on, so we powered up the computers and printers and reset all the digital clocks, the coffee maker, microwave, etc. Things went well for about 20 minutes when the power went out again!
This time it was off for only about a minute — just long enough for us to have to power up the computers and printers and reset all the digital clocks, the coffee maker, microwave, etc. Soon we were back in business — and after about five minutes the power went out for a third time! It was only out for about a minute — just long enough for us to have to power up the computers and printers and reset all the digital clocks, the coffee maker, microwave, etc.
Fortunately the power remained on for the rest of the day and the wind has now died down. Now if we would only get some of that rain!
Bumping The Limits of Technology
September 21, 2008
My Apple iMac.
I really do love my iMac and most Apple software. I’ve been a Mac user for almost 20 years and I have to be dragged kicking and screaming to use a PC.
I’ve had this Mac for about six years now. Most of the time I have no problems, but lately I’ve been having a problem with Apple’s iWeb application.
When I started writing this blog in January, 2007, I was using iWeb for the blog itself and also for my photo pages. Things went very well until April of this year when iWeb suddenly stopped publishing my blog. After several days of experimentation I discovered that by deleting entries from my blog archive I could resume writing and publishing.
Things went well until mid-July, when once again iWeb quit publishing my blog. That time I moved my blog to this site, removed the blog archives from the old site, and continued to use iWeb to publish photo pages to my old site.
Earlier this week iWeb stopped publishing again. Further investigation showed that I’ve bumped up against the limits of memory (RAM) in my computer. Betsy and I were going to get new computers this spring, but we changed our mind. Perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea.
I’ve ordered some more RAM memory for my computer to get me through until Tennessee’s next tax-free weekend. When the memory arrives I’ll have to perform surgery on my computer. I’ll keep you posted!
Senior Moments 