bludger.org

Back on the air

July 28th, 2005 - 6:33pm

Over the past couple of days, a few of you (probably all of the readers have asked me where the site went. Well, let me regale you with the events of the last few days:

On Tuesday evening, as I was driving home, Justine called me to advise me that the globe in one of our lamps had blown. She asked me to drive to the local Bunnings store to pick up a couple of spares. I was sure that we actually had a spare hidden away somewhere; Justine found the spare, and the conversation ended.

When I arrived home, I was advised that the globe had not fixed the lamp; we assumed the lamp must be broken — no biggie, the lamp wasn’t really very expensive and maybe we could buy a nicer one this time. I went over to the computers to check if the newest episodes of Family Guy and Entourage had arrived, but on the way I noticed the fridge wasn’t making any noise, and our phone was off. Making my way through the house, I began to realise that there were very few appliances actually working.

I immediately assumed a fuse had blown, since some appliances were working and others (including the fridge) were not. I went outside to check the fuses and noticed we have three power circuits (not including the lights, hot water [pilot, I guess, since it's gas hot water], oven and overhead fan). I pulled the block thingamajig (this will be it’s official name from now on) out of all three and the fuse in all three was fine. Trying to do a bit more detective work, I used the block thingamajig from the working circuit in both the non-working ones. It made no difference.

After checking with the power company that nothing fishy was going on (maybe a weird brownout or something?) we then proceeded to call five 24-hour electricians, with none of them answering.

Next I called our estate agent, and advised her of the situation; she told me she’d call out an electrician first thing tomorrow morning.

That night (still Tuesday), we made dinner on our stovetop, but had to use a lighter since the electric starter wasn’t. After watching some TV, and then reading more of the new Harry Potter book (which I’d started while away in Tasmania), I proceeded to go to bed in a rather cold bedroom.

Wednesday I stayed home from work trying to contact our estate agent, who seemed determined to be uncontactable. Eventually I made contact and they advised they’d send around an electrician to fix it all. Justine came home from work around 10:00 and I went to work around 11:00. The first electrician arrived sometime after midday and advised that the entire house needed rewiring. This is a costly and lengthy process, he said, and would require us to permanently move out (or at least for a few weeks, if not longer).

I began frantically searching for houses and sent a few to Justine, who looked at a couple of apparent crapshacks later that afternoon.

The landlord obviously didn’t like the first electrician’s answer, so called in another. The second parroted the first, though advised we wouldn’t have to move out, as it would take “only” four days. We would, however, have to be present the whole time; and it would be messy. Why we needed to be present I’m not sure.

Wednesday evening, I ran an extension cable halfway through the house so I could power up my computer long enough to burn some unwatched TV shows to DVD. After watching said TV shows, I read some more of the new Harry Potter book in front of the heater, and then made my way to bed in a rather cold bedroom.

Thursday morning (this morning) and the landlord was still obviously unhappy with the verdict which would cost him a lot of money. Electrician number three arrived and proceeded to investigate. After a lot of umming, ahhing, and crawling under the house, they found the source of the problem.

Underneath our house is another fuseboard. Why? Again, I don’t know. Maybe it’s something to do with the ice cream van. After more banging and crashing, electrician number three managed to resolve the problem with the fuseboard under our house, and besides making a mess had our house all happy again.

So here I am now, typing on my computer the reasons for the website being unavailable.

THE END

Tags: broken, stupid, website, weird