So I am going to make a definite effort to not write about work...

I spent some time looking through my entries and then reading some of my favorite journals. I realized that work is a repeating theme for me, and that it's also a source of stress for me. Not that I don't enjoy my work - it's just that the immense sense of urgency that our customers and sales reps feel in 99.9% of situations is not shared by me. My motto tends to be "I'll get to it when I can." And that seems to work most of the time. I generally get everything done that needs gettin' done. I just learned that if I put off one thing in order to attend to someone else's "emergency" I will likely forget to finish what I started. So now that I've sneaked in the topic I wasn't going to write about, I'll get on to better things.

First and foremost - I am proud to say that I, with the help of a great and patient friend whom I'll call "Sam" since that's his name - installed a garage door opener last Saturday. It wasn't fun, and it wasn't quick. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

***A little background***

Amanda's car was apparently too far back when she went to open her garage door, the door had an argument with her bumper and the bumper won. It came away with some scars that won't heal anytime soon (mainly because we don't have the money to fix them) but is OK. The door however didn't live through the incident. More precisely, the little plastic gear in the motor didn't survive the fight. It was shredded. "We got hosed, Tommy." Shredded. Dead. Just a hunk of plastic now.

***Back to the story***

A hint for anyone interested in putting in a garage door opener. If you buy the kind with the sensors that don't allow the door to close if your car/kitty cat/child/mother-in-law is in the path of the door, INSTALL THE SENSORS! I can't stress this point enough. We didn't install them originally and after four hours of Sam and I messing with this thing, we gave up. Yup. We gave up. Only to have Amanda reveal to me the secret the next day. It seems that in approximately 14 places in the installation guide the manufacturer went to the trouble of printing

"Device will not operate unless sensors are in place."

We must have missed that. It's easy to do... isn't it? Heck - we even ended up with some of those "spare parts" that every manufacturer puts in the box. Yup. That's right. Every maker of anything that needs assembly puts some extra parts in the box. No, you say? Well that's been my experience.

previous - next

duh - 2008-09-15

hi mac - 2006-12-12

corporate whore - 2006-11-03

new - 2006-10-05

elvis costello sings for you - 2006-09-27

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