life on the wand

About 10 days ago I noticed the starter was turning over more slowly, but no symptoms of a low battery (dimming lights, etc.). After picking up a bed at a local furniture warehouse the starter wouldn't turn over or even make a clicking sound. I just let the van roll and popped the clutch (I love manual transmissions). Drove it to work and then home and parked it until I had a chance to fix it. Well, I had another furniture item to pick up before I got around to fixing it so had another day of parking on hills and push-starting the van. Finally pulled the starter last night and found that the wire that goes from the solenoid to the starter motor was fully corroded and broken. So, today I went to Home Depot and bought some #4 solid copper wire and a couple of terminal lugs and came up with this solution. Works like a charm right now. We will see how long it lasts, but for the moment I spent $4 to save $125.


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Thursday night I grabbed a drink out of the fridge in the garage before going to bed. The refrigerator was cold; the light inside came on when I opened the door. Friday morning I went to the fridge for another bottle of water. Hmm, no light. Bulb must have burned out. No, wait a minute, the wine cooler and freezer are both off, too. Okay, no power. But the garage lights are on! Huh, must be the circuit breaker. Was the breaker tripped? Hard to tell. Just turn it off and back on and see if anything is working. Nope. Oh, this circuit has a GFCI receptacle on it. Yep, sure enough, GFCI is tripped. Whoa, it won't reset. Well, I'm going to be late to work if I don't just rig something up. So, extension cord, plug everything in; Yay! It's all working!

So, today I pulled the receptacle to see if the GFCI had somehow failed.



Wow! Glad the house didn't catch on fire. Best I can tell the screw that holds the wire in was loose. At least, it is loose now. I hope that is all that was wrong.
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I need a picture of the camp t-shirt to add to this post. You see, they misspelt Philippians on the camp t-shirt, so it was already on my mind when we went into Baker Books in Grand Rapids and saw this bag for sale. I felt like I should add a little parenthetical expression after the verse reference: (Except spell!).


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Joyce sent me this picture of the dining room wire pull through the ceiling trusses using an AC register for access.

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We set up wireless networks when we moved into this house in January and things seemed okay at first, but soon it seemed like the network was often bogged down, the printer was not working consistently, and Joyce's computer had a very inconsistent connection. So, before too long we had Ethernet cables strung from the laundry room down the hall, from the switch to the printer, etc. This was not a way to please the person who does the majority of floor maintenance, and so a better solution had to be found. So, since I couldn't sleep Saturday morning anyway I got up and went to Home Depot and got 1000' of the Cat5e cable and some remodel boxes. I spent a good portion of the day up in the attic drilling holes and feeding wires through with fish tape. Ugh: sweat, no air, fiberglass insulation, etc. The biggest challenge was

getting wires into the living room/dining room wall. First I had to take the cable TV box out of a wall, fish wire from the upstairs attic to the 2" by 4" hole in the wall left by the cable TV box. From there I had to use a flexible drill to go into the 2" x 4" hole and drill into the area between the first and second floors. Then, in the dining room I took an air conditioning register out, removed the ductwork, and reached up through the hole. With lots of persistence and a bit of luck we managed to fish the wire across the top of the formal dining room ceiling. Then I had to reach up through the hole in dining room ceiling and drill another hole down into the wall. From there I was able to fish the wires down to the new outlet boxes I installed. The other outlets were easier to install, but I spent the whole day Saturday working on the drops into the rooms.

Sunday afternoon I worked on the location in the laundry room where the FIOS comes into the house and where I wanted to put the router and switch. I also added a power outlet up there so I wouldn't have wires all over the place. I still have tools scattered here and there and some insulation to clean up, but overall the job is done and the wired Ethernet network is working very well. Below is one of the new outlets and the connection for Joyce's kitchen computer.


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