Roblog

I'd like to install a new junction box in my attic off of the existing light circuit to plug in my fluorescent light I found in the garage. Although I feel pretty confident I can do this safely, it sounds to me like something that only a licensed electrician can do. All things being equal, though, I'd like to be able to do this myself.

So I went on a Google Quest to see if I could tell if I can legally do this work.

I did determine that I don't have to have a license. As a homeowner, I am exempt from that requirement: Houston Electrical Licensing Exemptions. But a Dallas website implies that all electrical work must be done by an electrician unless I can prove I have the knowledge and expertise to do the job.

I think I could make this case, even given my limited handyman skills, if I could see what the electrical code was. Well, to my suprise, it is not available for free online. It appears you have to buy a copy of the National Electrical Code.

So I'll think about this some more. If I feel confident I can do this safely and correctly, I'll probably go ahead and do it. I'm not really looking forward to paying an electrician $150+ to do this for me.

I was working on my finances this evening, and I wanted to check my Flexible Spending Account balance for 2005, to see what more I need to claim. After struggling to figure out my login information, I was shocked to get the following message (click for a larger screenshot):

Perhaps their on-line system isn't as integrated with their other systems as I would think. I have a vision of a bank of office workers waiting for someone to click on the link. As soon as I click it, they rush to their files, pull up the relevant information, type it in, press a button, and it gets sent to my screen.

Maybe the iunformation displayed is so confusing that a vast majority of people have to call into their helpdesk anyway to get it explained to them. So to keep from having to staff the helpdesk 24 hours a day, they just prevent the confusing information from being displayed during non-business hours.

Whatever the rationale is, I'm pretty sure it doesn't make much sense.

For our most recent big vacation to New England to see the fall colors, we took the digital camera, the film camera, and the digital voice recorder. I just recently got all the pictures labeled in iPhoto, and all the audio files loaded into iTunes, so now I'm ready to make the picture-enhanced DVD-based audio trip diary.

Just for fun, here's a sample:

There is something very compelling about having the audio recorded without video. I really like the affect it provides. So I've already burned the audio files to a CD for listening without any visual aids. But I'd also like to try creating an edited version with accompanying pictures on a DVD.

I just started the iMovie project to allow me to precisely control which pictures appear when and for how long during the audio diary, but I realized this is going to take a while. Whittling down the audio will be the most time-consuming, but selecting the pictures to go along with it, and any supporting graphics I may want to use (I'm thinking maps), will take some time as well.

I plan on having fun doing it, but instead of a weekend project , I hope to complete it in a couple of months.

Every once in a while, I'm struck by how little of what I am doing now would make sense to my past self. I've been with the same company for 7 years, but 3 years ago this project did not exist.

So, for the record (and for my future self, since my past self is unavailable), here are the tasks I listed as my having spent time on this past week. Names of people have been replaced with initials.

A happy confluence of cool weather in Houston and the standard number of adults at home this weekend (no one visiting us and neither Donna nor I traveling) allowed us to start and complete one of our winter objectives: clean out the garage.

We actually use our garage for our cars, rather than using it for a substitute basement to store anything we didn't want to look at, so this was an achievable project for one weekend. We completely emptied the garage, trashing what we could and sorting the rest, and then put it all back.

I would say we got rid of about half the things in the garage. It did not amount to all that much, but many of the items we trashed were paints or old garden supplies; some of this will take a special trip to the recycling center to dispose of properly.

Among the notable things I ran across during the project were: 2 dead rats, about 40 lethargic cockroaches (now dead), and a fluorescent light I'd like to install in the attic.