21 December 2003 04:47
tonight i took my alarm clock apart. there's a little sign on the bottom. it says:CAUTION RISK OF ELECTRICK SHOCK DO NOT OPEN
SHOCK HAZARD — DO NOT OPEN
RISQUE DE CHOC ELECTRIQUE — NE PAS OUVRIR
so i wondered to myself.. should i unplug it? ...
i decided not to.
so i opened it, removed the buttons for fast forward and backwards, cleaned the contacts and put it back together. now the set fast forward (which quit yesterday) works. in addition to that, the slow forward and reverse now work.. they have not worked for at least three years. i've been meaning to perform this task for about that amount of time. my life is now easier, because i can set my alarm precisely without having to shoot back and forth across my desired time until i managed to get my timing on the fast buttons just right.
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on my old car the antenna broke. this was a retractable antenna, so the motor would run and run, trying to retract the antenna. i manually had the antenna extended, so reception was fine, the motor would run happily in the background. not wanting to run down my battery, i would pull the fuse for the antenna. this would also disable my electric door locks, interior lights and radio. so when i wanted to listen to the radio (which is always), i would have to plug the fuse in when i started the car and unplug it when i got back home. i lived like this for four months, not wanting to dig into the antenna, inconveniently sandwiched between the front quarter panel and the engine compartment firewall. one day i traced the wires on a whim, found a connector conviently located under the dash, and had power disabled to the antenna in the space of about eight minutes. now i could leave the fuse in all the time. eight minutes and i waited four months to do it.
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i will now leave you with these two stories, casually mention that i am ignoring the spiritual overtones they could be an allegory to, and depart. because i really don't feel like incriminating myself tonight :).
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