November 16, 2005
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More Unnecessary Moves
We just had a new roof installed, replacing a 15 year roof after 20+ years. It is a very nice new roof that, depending on how the light strikes it, appears either light tan or gray.
When they finished the roof, my computer didn't work any more.
It wasn't the computer itself that was broken. It simply wasn't receiving any power. I checked all of the circuit breakers and found one that had tripped, a double 20-watt breaker.
When I first left the country, in 1968, my father decided to install an air conditioner. In order to place the machine in the living room, he needed a new circuit. It was a 220-volt device, a monster from Montgomery Ward that never worked, and the conduit for the new wiring was run through the attic, across the entire house and down the outside west wall.
When we wrote the roofing contract, we specified adding three dormers. Each dormer required cutting a two foot hole in the roof. I figured that the roofers, in cutting the western-most dormer hole, had severed the conduit. I so reported to the owner of the roofing company, RC Roofing. He brought in an electrician to check it out.
The problem wasn't due to the dormers, so I wound up paying the electrician for tracking down the problem. It was the power line filter block the computer was connected to, which had burned out completely.
My wireless Internet access point was also burned out and needs to be replaced. The computer itself is fine. I just can't connect to the Internet with it -- unless I rob the access point from another computer.
How many computers do I have? There are two in regular use and two or three others that should work but are disconnected and there are parts of old computers I could possible connect to get one or two more computers running. Basically, though, I just have two working machines, although one of them will run several different operating systems. That's the one that is currently off line.
Those are the downstairs computers that I use. There is another computer upstairs where we connect to the Internet and have the network. I originally had one built for Delia. Cathy took it over and overstressed it, so I had another built in a Shuttle box / board combination to replace it. Delia doesn't use it, despite encouragement to do so, and Cathy again has it strained to its limits, despite which she doesn't want me to upgrade it from Windows 98SE to another Windows system or something better.
Anyway, I had to run over to Sam's Club and get a new power line filter block for $20.
I did learn something else of value from the electrician. I always thought it would cost me many thousands of dollars to re-wire the house with three-prong outlets everywhere, but I have at least two alternatives. The cheapest, at $600-$800, is to have a crew come in and add GFI (Ground Fault Interrupt) outlets to each existing circuit, placing ungrounded three prong outlets everywhere. The second alternative would be to replace the electric meter and power panel with a new meter and power panel that already have GFI built in, at about three times what the cheapest alternative would run. Re-wiring the house, as I originally thought, would cost many thousands.
I have to buy one wireless access point for my computer. I should buy a second one so I can tie my color printer directly to the home network instead of to one computer that would share it over the network.