waking up

If you ever get your own place, the first thing you will learn (and by learn, I mean learn-the-hard-way) is that things break, and things need fixing.

So many complex things go into making a home work… it’s a wonder we as the human race went through the trouble at all to wire this and pipe that and stud there and pour concrete here. Oh wait, I remember why, the cold sucks and pneumonia kills people.

My problem with this is that I have largely been the type of person who pays for the knowledge and experience of another while rarely ever doing a single handy thing myself. Two opposite extremes. But sometimes, with your own place, you just simply have to! But when you do it… then it’s like… whoa, hey, I can actually fix something! And then you feel very proud, even if it’s something small. So I have been trying to do more things myself now. I want to put in guitar hooks into the wall when I am more certain on where I want them, or how I will do the mounting. I assembled a metal rack-shelf thingy from Costco myself. I built the TV stand myself. I feel a tiny bit ashamed that I am proud of these small achievements, but I don’t think I should be. I think men should know how to do these things. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t ask a pro to come fix my garbage disposal…

And by writing this, I’m hoping to chronicle my ineptitude, and watch it fade away.

With some timely advice from my next door neighbor, I sought out to do my next project: Fix my old Vornado fan I got prior to my freshman year in UCLA (2001):

The problem? The old power cord was weakened through four years of either mishandling or simple wear and tear… perhaps it was a bit of both. Either way, it snapped off in late 2005 and I was left with a perfectly good fan with no means of drawing electricity.

I held on the the fan for four years since it had broken. For the first two years after that, I was convinced Costco could take it back (I had no shame in asking, but their records didn’t go back that far, so no luck without a 4 year old receipt). Then for the next two years, I was convinced that I would be able to find someone smart/generous enough to fix it for me. Ambivalent, I brought the fan to my new home and left it sitting right outside. Broken, not in constant view when I am inside, but present as I would pull up into my driveway. I guess I stuck it in a place to goad myself into doing it.

Seeing it everyday still didn’t do the trick… until I struck up some conversation with my neighbor, who happens to know about ELECTRONICS! Ding ding ding! He opened it up for me and told me I could just buy an extension cord and strip it, strip the loose ends inside, expose enough copper thread from both wires to screw a wire connector (or “wire nut” as he called it) down, which connects them.

Here is a picture:

Those two orange cone things are the connectors, and the white cables coming out of them are just a random extension cord I bought from Walgreens for $3.

The process of re-assembling was more difficult than I thought, but with a little superglue to fix a crack I made and some real pressure on my screwdriver, I put it back together. The screws were HELLA hard to screw in. The result? Now I have a wonderful fan, and it’s functioning fully! But I bought the wrong extension cable… it’s a two to one thingy, so now I have this other random plug coming out on the other side… stupid. Not to mention, it’s white, so it’s crazy ugly.

But whatever, I did it.