Tag: home

Random thoughts

One of our bathroom sinks drains slowly. We’ve had maintenance out time and time again, but no matter what they do, it’s always just a bit slower than usual. Meanwhile, everytime they work on the faucet, its flow increases.

Last night I concluded it must be a water-saving drain. By draining slowly, it encourages you to not to turn the faucet up too far, or to run it too long, thus saving water. Sure, the same thing could be accomplished by just limiting the flow from the faucet, but that would be frustrating. This way you’re involved in the process, so it feels less like you’re being limited.

And on a less silly, but still plumbing-related note, a few nights ago I had an interesting old-habit experience. After loading the dishwasher, I lifted the door while opening the cabinet to get the box of soap. In my parents’ house, these are on a corner, so you can’t actually open the cabinet under the sink without lifting the dishwasher door out of the way. It’s been about 4½ years since I lived there, and countless loads of dishes… and yet the old habit resurfaced.

Current Mood: 🤔contemplative

Notice!

I don’t understand the management at our apartment complex. They give us 3 days’ notice that they’ll be trimming the trees on a weekday, and they decide to power-wash our front door on a Sunday afternoon with no notice at all.

Current Mood: 😕confused

Arachnid Intelligence(?)

Every morning last week, there was a spider web attached to the car. An active one, with a spider in the center, waiting for flies, moths, and possibly small rodents. It would anchor one side to the carport post, and the other side to the driver’s side rear door. This resulted in me walking around through another carport, tossing my stuff in the back from the front seat, then gleefully ripping the web apart as I drove out of the space.

This happened three or four mornings in a row.

You’d think the spider would tumble to the fact that “Hey, this giant metal thing moves every day! Maybe I should attach my web to something else!”

Eventually it did. On Friday, it stayed outside and used the post and the roof instead, and by Saturday it had gone somewhere else. But it seems to be a common failing in spiders: we went by my parents’ house one night last week and there was another one, stretched from the olive tree to the minivan.

Strange Phone

Around 11:15, alenxa noticed the “in use” light on our main phone was on. Figuring we had a phone off the hook, she went and checked, but both other phones were properly hung up.

As near as I can tell, the “in use” light just means “no dial tone” – it turns on when you unplug the phone, for instance (it’s got an AC adapter to power the answering machine). So the next assumption was that the line was down… but strangely, the DSL was running. OK, so maybe one of the filters or adapters had gone back. I went unplugging everything I could, leaving each phone in turn as the only device hooked up, but the line still sounded completely dead.

Next step: Call SBC on the cell phone, navigate their menu, and hit the wrong option just before actually reporting a problem. Swear, decide to wait a few minutes and see what happens, get back to reading www.neilgaiman.com and notice, hey, it’s telling me google.com doesn’t exist? Look over at the DSL modem and watch it syncing up.

After a few rounds of this, I decided it was time to call again. Once again through the menus, up to the point of reporting a problem, then it asks for the type of problem, and I realize we haven’t actually tested an incoming call. So instead of “dead line or no incoming calls” I choose “no outgoing calls” and (as SBC starts running a test on the line) I ask Katie if she’ll try calling the home number, just for kicks. As she’s getting her phone, the voice comes back, saying “we have found the problem. We will need to schedule an appointment with an SBC technician…”

Great. So it’s not back *and* they need to send someone out to fix it. But as I’m walking back into the other room, I notice the “in use” light is off again, and then the phone rings (Katie in the next room).

SBC continues to explain that the problem appears to be with the wiring at this end, and I can either fix it myself or have SBC come out to fix it, and I can test whether it’s SBC’s wiring or my wiring that’s broken by going out to the switch box (as if I have access to the switch box for my apartment building) and hooking up a phone there, and would I like to schedule an appointment… and meanwhile I’m checking the phones and getting perfectly serviceable dialtones.

So there’s a problem with the wiring at this end, but their automated, remote test cleared it up.

Well, at least we can receive calls again (and the DSL doesn’t seem to be going down every 3 minutes).

Current Mood: 😕confused