Friday, August 14, 2015

Good morning crew,

Let's wind the clock back 7 months to January. I was standing in snow up to my knees while an electrician told me that the wiring buried in the ground between my house and the garage was fried.

Not being able to do anything about it with nearly 2 feet of snow on the ground I put the problem out of my mind until more favorable weather conditions would allow me to address it.

Now, with the summer trickling away, the problem has been gnawing on me, because if I put it off for very much longer I'm going to have snow on the ground again!

The problem seems relatively easy; there is a box coming out of the wall of the house with a conduit running straight into the ground. 25 feet away there is a box on the outside of the garage wall. It doesn't take a Michael Faraday to figure out where the electrical conduit is. All I SHOULD have to do is unscrew the box on the house, identify where the wiring enters the garage, and pull new wires through.

Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

So yesterday I found myself with a free afternoon and decided to start unscrewing the electrical boxes in the garage and poking around in there with a screwdriver. In a very few minutes I had quite a tangle of wires in a rainbow of colors squirting out of half a dozen receptacles, none of which appeared to lead outside.

Not to by stymied by such a small hurdle I started pulling the drywall down off the wall. Now, with half of the garage dismantled, I had a clear picture of where all the conduit was going, but to my eye everything seemed to be wired together in a sort of tangle! Some wires from this box went to that box, and other wires went to another box, and other wires just stopped and were taped up in little bundles of black electrical tape.

So, instead of burning the garage down with an electrical fire I decided to call somebody who knows about these things. My brother Nino (and his company) has been doing this kind of work, albeit on a commercial scale, for 30 years. I figured one little garage should provide him with no challenges.

He showed up, toting a volt meter, a pair of wire strippers and a fish tape, and set to testing all of the wires. In a very few minutes he had it all figured out. He identified and separated out four wires and wound them around the end of his fish tape.

"Ok," he said, "you go out by the house and start pulling on the wires coming out of the ground. I'll feed the fish tape through here."

Out I went and hooked a finger though the wires coming out of the conduit. Nino yelled from the garage, "Go ahead and start pulling!"

I yelled, "I am pulling!"

"Pull harder!" he yelled back.

So, wrapping some slack wire around a hammer, I planted my feet wide and grabbed the hammer handle between my legs. One sturdy tug and about 8 inches of conduit popped out of the ground trailing 4 wires. Whoever buried the wire originally had laid it directly in the dirt! The worst possible case scenario.

Of course! It makes perfect sense. Why spend a few lousy bucks on 20 feet of stupid conduit when you can leave the problem for some poor, dumb slob to figure out 20 years later? And after all these years that wire is stuck down there, too.

The only way to get new wire down there now is to dig. And the problem with that is about 11 feet of concrete patio and sidewalk.

Nino gave me a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders and told me he was going out of town for the weekend. "I've got a shovel you can borrow," he said.

I spent most of last night lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out how in the hell I am going to get conduit down there. In my fevered imagination I have thought of digging a little tunnel underneath the concrete, or perhaps digging a trench four times as long AROUND the patio. But the worst case scenario is taking a sledgehammer to the concrete.

Well, how hard can pouring new concrete be? Let's see...I'll need a wheelbarrow, a trowel (or a 'float' I think it's called), about 2 yards of gravel, a compactor...

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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"A new study has revealed that the reading level of presidential speeches has dropped significantly over the last 200 years. Or as Americans put it, 'Why dat?'" -Jimmy Fallon

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"A new study of online dating profiles reveals that women respond 31 percent better to men who use the word 'whom.' Frankly, I don't know whom these men are, or whom they're trying to impress." -Conan O'Brien

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"A woman in the U.K. held a wedding ceremony to marry herself. I don't know how to tell you this, but I think that lady you just married might be crazy." -Seth Meyers

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"YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY..."

"Everything Comes In Threes" - Not true. In reality, everything comes in ones. Sometimes, when three "ones" come in a row, it seems like everything comes in threes. By the way, in medieval times, it was widely believed that everything came in twenty-sixes. They were wrong, too. It just took them longer to recognize the pattern.

"You Can't Take It With You (when you die)" - Well..., that depends on what it is. If it's your dark blue suit, you can certainly take it with you. In fact, not only can you take it with you, you can probably put some things in your pockets.

"You Learn Something New Every Day" - Actually, you learn something old every day. Just because you've just learned it, doesn't mean it's new. Other people already knew it, Columbus is a good example of this.

"You Get What You Pay For" - Clearly this is not true. Have you been shopping recently? Only a very naive person would believe that you get what you pay for. In point of fact, if you check your purchases carefully, you'll find that you get whatever they feel like giving you. And if corporations get any more powerful, you soon might not even get that.

"NICE GUYS FINISH LAST" - Not true. Studies have shown that, on average, nice guys finish third in a field of six. Actually, short guys finish last. By the way, in medieval times, it was widely believed that nice guys finished twenty-sixth. You can see how limited those people were.


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
Two lawyers are in a bank, when, suddenly, armed robbers burst in.

While one of the robbers takes the money from the tellers, the other lines the customers, including the lawyers, up against a wall, and proceeds to take their wallets, watches, etc.

While this is going on lawyer number one jams something in lawyer number two's hand. Without looking down, lawyer number two whispers, "What is this?"

To which the first lawyer replies, "It's that $50 I owe you."