More than you asked for.

… I installed my smoke/CO detectors last night.  I bought them because they didn’t look like your usual detectors, they’re square and curved.  Figured they wouldn’t stick out as much.  They do much more than just warn you that your house is on fire or you are about to suffocate.  They beep and they say “Fire, exit now” and “Carbon dioxide detected, move to fresh air” in both English and Spanish.

… But even better they have you set these little switches to match.  I had no idea why until I tested the second one – and they both went off. Yup, they’re a SYSTEM.  If one goes off, it tells the other one to go off also.  Way cool.  Now I want to get a dozen more, so I can hear “Monoxido de carbono detectado.  Muevase a un sitio con aire fresco.” broadcast throughout the house.

Karma in action.

… This woman was having trouble with her card out at the pumps, and came in with an attitude.  Before I could even say “HI”, she says to me “What’s the problem out there at your pumps?”  Instead of saying that 9 times out of 10 it’s the proverbial ID-10-T error, I blamed it on the  weather, and cheerfully offered to run it pre-pay at my register.  Attitude still intact, (apparently I was suppose to mystically fix the problem at the pump), she agreed and we ran her card.

… “Credit Card Declined”.  In this case, the most beautiful words I’d seen all day.  Usually I don’t like to see those words.  It makes the customer unhappy, makes me uncomfortable and I hate explaining that I have no idea why the card was denied and, no, I can’t change it.  But I have to admit, making an arrogant person eat crow feels good.  Especially when you can do it in a customer-service appropriate way.

New smoke detectors, maybe?

… Seems I left a little mess at the bottom of the oven last time I used it.  I was cooking up a casserole this morning and smoke started pouring out of the oven.  As you can see, it filled the house.   No big deal, it didn’t smell up the house, and it’s already clearing out.  Except for one thing.  Neither of my smoke alarms went off, and I just changed the batteries when we went off daylight savings time.  Not the one on the kitchen ceiling, not the one in the bedroom.  I even did the little “weekly test” on them, while the house was full of smoke, and both tested out fine.  Yeah, they work, they just can’t smell smoke.  Hmmm, just a wee bit scary.

… Guess where I’m going before work today?  Yup.  Home Depot.  To  get 2 brand new smoke detectors.  The wiring in my house is only about 5 years old, but I did it myself and the house is almost 100 years old.  My biggest fear, other than the inevitable earthquake, is an electrical fire.  Which, until today, was comforted by the fact that I had 2 smoke alarms in a 1100 sq ft home.  Tonight I’ll sleep fine, with 2 brand new ones.

A buck forty eight.

… In my opinion, one of the worst problems to have in a old car is an electrical one.  With literally miles of wiring, problems can take hours and hours just to track down.  Which is why I’ve always said if you take it to a repair shop you can expect to spend hundreds of dollars on labor just to have a 47 cent part replaced.

… The most worrisome problem I saw when I pickled up my $200 car #55 was in the turn signal system.  The left signal worked perfect, but when you turned on the right signal, the left signal flashed also, although not as brightly.  It was even worse when either the tail lights or the brake lights were on.  Because of the crossover from one side to the other, I didn’t automatically assume that it had something to do with bad light bulbs, after all, they were all working.

… So I took apart the right tail light and started messing around with it.  All the bulbs were working, but I finally did notice that one of the two bulbs for the tail/signal/brake lights always burned bright.  The other one was bright whenever the signal was on, but was dimmer when it was just  the tail light.  (Older car tail lights have bulbs with two filaments in them, one dim one for the tail lights and one bright one for both the brakes and signals.)  So, I pulled out the bulb and noticed that it was a 1 filament bulb, in a 2 filament socket.  Not good.  A single filament bulb has a single electrical connection in the center, the double filament has two connections, one for the dim system, one for the bright system.  With the single connection in the center, put in the double socket, it was connecting the two systems together, which was what was making the whole thing skewompus.

… I put in a correct bulb and voila, everything worked right.  Which is a big relief for me, since the cost of fixing electrical problems can be so unpredictable.  Now, I at least have an good idea how much it’s going to cost me to get the new beast on the road.  I know it’s going to need a new exhaust system, which is no big deal since I’ve always put dual exhaust on the old LTDs I buy.  It will also need brakes and tires.  It’ll cost around $1,000 altogether, but at least I now know I’m not going to have to buy a complete new electrical harness for the car.

I crack me up.

… We have a worker who just loves to tell the manager how to run his operation.  When he ordered 70 cases of windshield washer fluid a month ago, she left a note on the office door asking him if he went insane.  (P.S. – we’ve got only 45 cases left and most of the winter season to go).

… Yesterday I got to work and saw this note stuck to a half-empty case of gum that was (according to her) not in a place it belonged.  I of course, just read it, thought “yeah, why” and left it at that. 

… Ok, so I really got a piece of the register tape and added to her note.  All I can say is that I think that Uncle Chuckie, my Intellectual Traditions of the West professor from the “U” (the place Max Hall hates) would be proud of me.  Right, Pedro?

… Yes, sometimes I do crack me up.