Learning to be great

Here is the remainder of the story.

Well, this introduces a problem. Out of all the circuit breakers on the panel, none was marked “Main”. That means the main breaker was somewhere else in the house.

I call my good friend Eddie, he’s very handy, and hoped for some advice. It turned out he was still at work, but his wife, Alice, was able to give me the contact information of the electrician they use. Alice also told me to call Eddie’s cellphone. I called him right away, it was just my luck he was on his way home and just passing the exit where I live. Being a good friend, he immediately diverted course, and came to my place directly.

The first we needed to do was to figure out where the main breaker was. Eddie had a slightly older house, and he told me in addition to a switch panel, he also had fuse box. So we spent the next hour and half looking for a fuse box inside the house. I also vaguely remember seeing a fuse box somewhere, it turned out later to be the result of false memory, but I didn’t know at that time.

We couldn’t find any fuse box. We then went to two of our neighbors’ houses to see if they know where their fuse boxes were. It turned out though, they never had the same problem with their circuit, and never had the chance to use anything other than the circuit breakers.

We were baffled, and a little bit demoralized. As luck would have it though, Eddie and I went back to the electrical meter, and plied open the box next to it, we thought it was locked, but it really just latched in. Anyway, there it was, the main circuit breaker, and it was tripped. After we turned on the main breaker and all the subsequent breakers on the panel inside my house, electricity was restored. However, the circuit breaker that was controlling the rooms affected still tripped when we try to flip it on. Eddie told me it could be that the breaker was shorted as well.

So the next decision is whether to have the broken circuit breaker replaced professionally or by myself. I’m not that handy around the house, haven’t had the chance to poke around much. Eddie however, has done this numerous times, and he assured me that I can do it, then showed me in detail how to replace the circuit breaker myself. I practiced couple of times under his watchful eyes, and was told I got it.

There was yet another decision to be made. I was thinking of turning off the power to the whole house again, take out the broken circuit breaker and bring it to a store so I can get the exact replacement, making sure I don’t make the same mistake as I did with the receptacle. However, this means the whole house will be without electricity for at least couple of hours, and that will be quite inconvenient for everybody.

I decided I’d actually write down the information on the circuit breaker and call OSH to see if they carry the model. I did just that, however, the gentleman on duty at the time of my call was filling in for someone, and he wasn’t very knowledgeable in circuit breakers. I was told to call back the next day when they have the regular lady (the one who sold me the wrong receptacle) available. I decided to try my luck with Home Depot, and drove there directly.

I couldn’t find circuit breaker on display that matches the model number on my broken one. I again looked for help, and again a lady came to my rescue. She found the breaker easily, telling me I didn’t really need the same model number as long as they were from the same manufacture and had the same rating (Amps). She even showed me the proper way to install a breaker with a dummy panel, which was exactly how Eddie described it.

I went home, turned off the main breaker, took out the broken breaker, installed it and screwed in the wire. It took all of 10 minutes.

However, this is one more thing to do before I turn on the breaker. You see, one should never solve a problem without figuring out why the problem happened in the first place. So I unplugged all the appliances from the wall outlets of the rooms affected. I then only turned on the formally broken circuit breaker. Then I plugged in the appliances one at the time to make sure it didn’t trip the breaker. I was proceeding happily along until I tried to plug in the power cord of the new Dell Inspiron’s power supply. I saw an arc, and the breaker tripped again. So that’s what was causing the problem.

I used a meter to figure out that the Dell power plug was actually shorted out. I then called Dell immediately, they promised to send me a replacement part. However, when I got the replacement parts three days later, I found that Dell sent me the wrong parts! Instead of a power cord and an AC/DC converter, they sent me a heat-sink and a fan for a desktop. I had to call Dell again to straighten that out. But I digress.

At this moment, we have electricity and we couldn’t be happier. I’m sure my yet-to-be-born baby would also be proud of his dad 🙂

So what have I learned:

• It’s pays to have friends who you can count on
• It’s pays to know a bit more about electricity and how electrical systems/components work
• You needs to stay calm during any crisis so people around you don’t panic
• Never give up until you find the solution

Anyway, life’s full of challenges, and that’s what makes it so interesting.

I spent a large part of my Thursday night, Friday and Saturday morning trying to fix the electrical problem.

It all started when JY called me at work on Thursday morning, she told me that the wall outlet that’s next to her looked burned-out, and that there were no electricity in two of our bedrooms. My house is fairly new, and I hadn’t dealt with anything so serious (to me at least) before. So I told my wife to stay calm, and told her I’ll take care of it when I get home. JY’s pregnant with our first child, she’s already under a lot of stress, I definitely don’t want to add to that stress.

When I got home, I found just as JY described. The wall outlet had a burned-out face plate. The prongs on extension cord attached to the outlet were burned as well.

I decided the first thing to do is to research. So I brought out couple of those thick home-improvement books, got a crash course on electrical systems. I decided to practice what I learned.

I first gathered some basic tools, removed the faceplate. The receptacle behind looked burned-out as well. I decided the first thing to do is to get a new one. So I turned off the circuit breaker that controls this area of the house, then remove the receptacle.

I brought the receptacle to the closest OSH, I was looking at all the receptacles they had there (there were quite a few), when a nice lady who works there asked me if I needed help, I was relieved that I was not alone facing my problem. She took a look at the burned-out one I brought, and told me to get the professional model, which is supposed to be much better. I asked her a bunch of questions, got the answers I needed, then went home with the shiny new professional receptacle.

Well, maybe because it was the professional model, the instruction on the box was really skimpy. One thing I noticed though, there were 8 holes in the back instead of the 4 holes on my original one. I was a bit concerned, don’t know which holes to plug the hot and neutral wires into. I tried all eight, none of which will screw tight enough to keep the wires in. I tried for half an hour without much success. The problem was it was the duplex model, it’s meant to be for pairs of hot wires. Anyway, I called OSH again, got the same lady who sold me the receptacle on the phone, trying to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work. Well, it took me on the phone for 10 minutes to figure out it’s not going to work. So I drove back to OSH, got the consumer model that looked exactly like the burned-out one. It took me 5 minutes in total to install it.

By now, I felt pretty handy. It’s the kind of invincibility one feels due to lack of understanding.

I then went to the main control panel, and flipped the switch to the ON position. However, the switch immediately jumped to the tripped position and I saw an arc. I didn’t know what to do, so I flipped the switch one more time, and the whole house went dark.

To be continued…

We spent most of Saturday with JY’s friends whose daughter, Felicia, was having her birthday party.

Actually, we originally wanted to visit JY’s friend Stella and remedy a regret we had. Stella graciously offered her son Bruce, to jump on our marital bed right after our wedding. It’s part of Chinese tradition, because Stella and her husband had one girl and one boy, and that their families are all intact, having her son jump on our marital bed was supposed to be auspicious. By having Bruce jumping on our marital bed, along with dates, peanuts, gui yuan, and lotus seeds spread along the bed, we were wishing we would have at least a girl and a boy as cute as Bruce and her sister Iris. And thanks in part to Bruce, our daughter Lauren will be born soon.

Unfortunately, we lost the photos that I took during the “bed jumping” ritual. I was busy moving stuff around to prepare for JY’s move to my house, and somehow misplaced the photos.

I decided to make up for the mistake, and take some more photos of Bruce jumping on a bed with all the nuts so I staged a repeat performance. I also wanted a chance to test out the Maxxum 5D I bought in anticipation of my daughter’s birthday.

Both worked out well. Bruce was a bit reluctant at the beginning because he was very sleepy, but once he got into the spirit, he was jumping up and down without being prompted. Here are some photos of him doing just that.
        

After that, we went to another friend’s house for her birthday party. There were four families there not counting JY and me, five girls of various ages, and Bruce, the only boy. We were well fed and had a great time. One thing I can tell you for sure though, having so many children in the same house can sure result in utter chaos. The children had quite a few problems, sometime they were able to resolve themselves, the other time, adult supervision was required.

It all worked out well in the end. JY and I had a great time, and that’s the last party we will attend before the birth of our baby because our baby can arrive anytime now.

I’ve linked to the photos I took at Stella’s place and during the party below. As I mentioned, I used my Maxxum 5D with a 28-135mm Minolta lens, and a 5400 HS flash. Most shots used bounced flahs. BTW, for those of you using Minolta, the 5400 HS flash won’t work in TTL or ADI mode. You need to set the AE to Manual, and change the flash output manually on the flash itself. It’s a pain. That’s why a lot of these photos are from the same distance and the same angle.

Here are the photos from the party.

Keep looking here for updates on my daughter’s progress.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. JY and I spent lunch with a group of friends over hotpot, we did the usual gift exchange. We got some nice Hershey’s chocolate gift, and exchange with another couple (thanks Jeff and Iris) for another kind of chocolate that JY liked. I spent Christmas eve in Church watching a wonderful performance by our church choir, while JY stayed home resting.

Since JY’s birthday’s very close to Christmas. I bought her a Christmas-cum-birthday gift. A Dell Inspiron 6000 so that she won’t take up all my computer’s time, more time for me to blog! 😉 Truth be told though, she’s been very gracious, and let me use the desktop whenever I ask.

End of the year is always a good time for reflection, and I’ve done a bit myself. Looking back, 2005 has a been a truly blessed time for JY and me. We got married late 2004, since then we’ve worked out our differences, have a schedule that both of us are comfortable with, enjoyed each other greatly, and now we have our first child scheduled for January 2005. We thank you all for praying for us, and would ask for you to keep us in your prayers.

Merry Christmas everyone!