HOW MANY ENGINEERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?

When Ingrid and I were first married, I was a typical single dude. I had spent most of my time either working, reading, or trying to do all that stuff single males in the 1960’s and early 70’s supposedly did. Household maintenance and other do-it-yourself skills were not on the list. Alas, marriage, first home ownership, and lack of money can inspire many regrettable decisions. I became a do-it-yourselfer.

This pastime has served us well more often than not over the years, although I sometimes wonder what my golf handicap would be if I had spent just half the time playing golf that I have lying under sinks in the dark. The usual arguments in favor of DIY are that you can save a lot of money and attain the personal satisfaction of accomplishing a job well done. The actual flip side talking points are too numerous for me to list fully here, but suffice to say that Murphy had to be a DIYer before he wrote down all his laws.

This particular blog is about my recent experience changing a light bulb. I am a registered professional engineer with decades of experience. I have a pretty darn complete shop in my basement filled with all kinds of handyman tools and stuff. The mere act of changing a light bulb should be of no particular note, but in retrospect, I feel it serves as an excellent example to any young person out there as to what they should REALLY expect if they decide to become a DIYer.

We have a bunch of stairs that one must climb to get to our front door. Many of our friends are at that age where they are now too lazy to climb stairs, so they often prefer to use the path around the side of our house to the back door. At night, this path is illuminated by one of those motion detecting outdoor security floodlights up on the side of the house. For several weeks, people coming over had been complaining one of the light bulbs was burned out and they couldn’t see well coming up the path. My suggestions that they should use the front steps were ignored.

After an evening of bridge ended with the usual threats of legal action if anybody tripped and broke a leg while heading down the path to their cars, Ingrid laid down the law: “You really need to change that bulb. It’s getting embarrassing.”

The next morning after breakfast, I began. It was a cool sunny day; not altogether unpleasant for such a task, I thought to myself. I surveyed the situation: the light was about 12 feet above the ground up on the side of the house. I would need to get out the folding ladder which was safely stored in the back of the garage behind the luggage carrier, some stuff we are currently storing for my mother-in-law, the snow blower, the dog’s travel kennel, some shovels, two trash cans, some leftover floor tile from another project, a garden sprayer, a power washer in need of repair, and a lawn mower. None of this stuff could be moved until I backed my truck out of the garage to make enough room to relocate it.

Once the garage had been emptied out enough to access the ladder, I lugged it up around the side of the house, unfolded it and placed it securely against the wall. So far, so good. Now all I have to do is get up there and examine the problem bulb. I maintain a good inventory of spare bulbs in my shop, and I had absolutely no doubt that this was going to be a five minute job from this point on. Ah Ha. A PAR 38 Exterior Halogen Floodlight rated at 45 Watts. I buy those in six packs at Lowes. Know just where they are. They are in a cardboard box labeled “light bulbs” up on the shelf above the window in my shop. Down the ladder I went, humming to myself and wondering if Harry would be up for a quick nine holes after I got this done.

Once in my shop, I got up on my stepstool and pulled down the target cardboard box. No light bulbs in there. I must have used the last one and not gotten around to replacing my inventory. Oh well, Ace Hardware is just three miles up the street, and the truck is already in the driveway. No big deal. Off I went to Ace, got a couple of new bulbs (just in case one is bad, it’s rare but it has happened; also, now there would be a spare), and back home.

Back up the ladder. All I had to do now was remove the old bulb, screw in the new one, and reassemble the garage contents. Hmm. Old bulb was kind of stuck, hard to get a good grip in order to unscrew it. Maybe if I grab it this way---#$%#^, I STUCK MY THUMB THROUGH THE COVERING ON THE PHOTOELECTRIC EYE. #$%^&*((()!!!! Now another trip to Ace was in order. Back down the ladder, into the truck, back to Ace for a new light fixture. The checkout lady was very happy to see me again, and seemed to be a bit smug. I have had several projects that involved multiple experiences with her in one day, and she can be irritating.

Back home, back up the ladder. I had carefully turned off the power switch and put tape over it to keep anyone from inadvertently trying to electrocute me while I was working (lesson learned from another project). I removed the cover plate, undid the wire nuts, and came back down the ladder. Unpackaged the new light, organized the necessary tools, tape, etc. in my pockets and went back up. By this time, Ingrid had come out to assess my progress and offer her help. I assured her I had it under control, but she stayed around to watch anyway.

Things were going well now. I got all the wires connected with wire nuts and wrapped them with electrical tape just for an extra touch of professional detail. I then tightened down the screws and replaced the cover. All I needed to do next was insert the bulbs and adjust the angles so they were focused on the pathway our friends insisted on using. These particular fixtures had two bulbs, each in a socket arm that had adjustable hinges. To change the angle or direction of focus, one has to loosen a wing nut on the hinge, turn it to the desired angle, and then retighten the wing nut to hold it in place. First bulb arm, fine. Working on second one. Wing nut is a little stiff—just a little more snug, one quarter more turn---Ingrid says “not too tight!!!”. @##$^#$&%$%^*&(.!!! WING NUT BROKE OFF!!!

A little disturbed at the fact that I broke it off despite Ingrid’s warning, I recovered quickly. No problem, I assured her; I’ll just use a nut from the old fixture. After fooling with it for a few minutes up on top of the ladder, I determined this approach was not going to work for some reason. It would be necessary to completely remove the new fixture and get it down on the ground where I could see what the deal was inside where the wing nut is supposed to screw in. It was disheartening to undo all the fine professional quality work I had done connecting it up, but it had to be done.

Once I was back down on the ground, I took it back to my shop so I could at least listen to the radio while figuring this out. I quickly determined what the problem was: the hole into which the wing nut was supposed to screw was in the part that held the bulb socket. This part was cast from aluminum, and apparently I broke off the part of the casting that contained the screw hole. $^%*%(&). Another trip to ACE was in order. I was not looking forward to another exchange with the cash register lady.

Suddenly it hit me: I’ll just use one of the bulb arms from the old fixture; they are identical to the new ones anyway. As you might expect, this turned out to be a little trickier than one might think at first glance. All the wires running through the little tunnel in each bulb arm to the socket were connected together with those factory quality wire nuts that are not meant to EVER come undone. They had to be cut out, and the socket from the old arm transferred into the new one. OK.

Although I would never directly admit it to Ingrid, sometimes my eyesight up close isn’t quite what it used to be, especially in dim lighting. The socket had a little hole in the bottom which was intended for a very small screw to go through it in order to secure the socket to the bulb holder. I had to dig out a jeweler’s screwdriver to fit the screw, and then you couldn’t see the hole in the bulb holder casting because of the socket. I wound up using a desktop floodlamp and a head light (like you see people wearing while they walk their dogs at night). Still couldn’t get the screw to start in the threaded hole in the casting. I was convinced it should work; after all, the screw had just come out of that very hole. It HAD to be the right size; I was just not getting it in there at the right angle or something.

An hour later, Ingrid wondered into my shop to see what I was doing. By this time, I was red in the face. I gently and patiently explained my challenge to her, and she says: “why don’t you try a longer screw?” My immediate reaction was to poo-poo her suggestion, as the screw I was fiddling with had in fact come out of that very hole—it had to be the right one! She says, “is it the same socket?”

Hmmm…… Well, no…….. No, it is not. I was trying to put the new socket into the old fixture arm. I dug around for the screw that had come out of the new fixture arm and gave it a try--started perfectly the first time. Apparently, it was just a little longer than the one I had been working with and could now actually reach the first threads in the hole casting. Properly humbled, I got the thing back together very quickly from that point and went back up the ladder, redid all my professional quality wire connections, buttoned it up and flipped the switch: Success!

Total project summary: one bulb changed. Cost: $36.47 plus two trips to ACE. Only four hours of my time. Could have cost more if not for my brilliant idea to switch sockets in the bulb arms, so I guess I saved some money after all. Still, I felt very little satisfaction in a job well done.

MY MOM’S GREATEST GIFT: READING

A few days ago, I learned with some sadness that the Encyclopedia Britannica had announced it would cease its print version after 244 years in business.  The news brought back all kinds of memories of my mother and my early childhood.  I hadn’t really thought much about it in years, but Britannica was a major factor in the shaping of who I turned out to be.  To understand this, you need to know a little bit about my mom.

My mother’s name was Henrietta, which I always thought was kind of cute since my father’s name was Henry.  She was a kind of tall, slender woman with prematurely gray hair.  She had two sisters and a brother and was raised on a farm near Willis, Kansas.  Her folks (my grandparents) were of Scottish – English descent, which was kind of unusual given all of the Norwegian and Swedish immigrants in the area.  Upon graduating from Willis high school, she married my dad and moved to the big city of Horton, Kansas.

In fairly “traditional” fashion, my brother and sister were born, dad worked, mom took care of the house, there were lots of family around, and everybody voted Republican.  I believe she was very intelligent, as graduating from high school was a pretty big thing in that area back then.  My dad, whom I also have come to regard as vcry smart, dropped out before junior high to help support his large family.  Mom was “untraditional” in this way--far as I know, she never drove a car or wrote a check.  The town was small enough that she could walk anywhere she wanted and she depended on dad to handle the money. She also pretended to defer to him on just about everything.

Quite a while later, I came along.  Apparently, I was a little surprise nine months after a family vacation.  My brother and sister were 14 and 10 years older than I, respectively.  By that time, we were living in a little house across the street from the post office and just down the block from the public library.  It was a small two story home with a covered front porch that had a three foot tall crawl space underneath it enclosed by lattice; this was a perfect area for young boys to hide and do their secret stuff. The sidewalk was made of old red bricks that had become uneven and broken in most places with grass coming up in the cracks. The grassy area between the sidewalk and the street was about 15 feet wide and filled with wonderful old oak and elm trees that stretched to the sky. In the back was an old shed my brother used for his woodworking, and a rusted out oil drum by the alley used to burn the trash.

Mom was very shy and introverted.  Although she was active in church, I don’t recall her having a lot of friends that she spent time with.  Mostly it was one relative or another, or one of just a couple of other ladies.  Of course you also have to recognize that we had a helluva lot of relatives in the area. One of her mannerisms that just drove me crazy was the way she put herself down as an excuse for being quiet.  She would often claim that she was not smart enough to join a discussion or just a plain old country girl who didn’t know much. She was quite content to let Dad make most of the decisions and be the social butterfly (more about that elsewhere).

Anyway, I sometimes wonder now whether she was ready for a third child at that stage in her life.  She was already busy with a teenage boy and a preteen girl, a husband active in business and local politics, two sets of older parents, church, and many family interactions. She also did quite a bit of arts and crafts stuff: knitting and sewing different projects, some ceramics, etc. We still have some quilts she made around upstairs.

One big memory: I remember her teaching me to read at a very young age; I may have been just out of diapers. After I had learned enough to get through a short book without too much help, she would then often sit me down and tell me to read and be quiet while she made dinner or something.  At first, this involved children’s books. Then one day I stumbled on her set of the 1936 Encyclopedia Britannica.

I remember being dumbfounded that all the knowledge in the world could be found in that one set of grey hard cover volumes on the bookshelf. Like most little boys of that age, I was interested in dinosaurs, and mom showed me how to look up that subject and to follow related topics elsewhere. From then on I was hooked. I would go from topic to topic, digging into each one as much as I could until something else caught my fancy. Reading about volcanoes led to the idea that there were different kinds of rocks which led to minerals which led to gemstones like diamonds, etc. Different gemstones were associated with astrological signs which had to do with constellations of the stars which led to Greek and Roman mythology. Then I might be distracted by an article about tornadoes which piqued my interest since we had just had a tornado warning the day before. So off I would go learning as much as I could about weather. You get the idea.

I don’t remember that we had a television until a couple years later. Most kids in those days spent most of their time outside playing some kind of ball, cowboys and Indians, War, or something like that. I spent much of my time lying on my stomach on the floor with an encyclopedia volume under my nose. Occasionally, I would have to ask the meaning of a word; Mom would patiently explain it to me and then showed me another wonder: the dictionary. After that she pretty much never had to worry about where I was and I rarely bothered her.

Another big development was my discovery of the public library just down the block from our house. It was one of thousands of such structures across the country originally funded by the Carnegie Foundation decades before. It resembled some ancient Greek temple with lots of big stone steps leading up to the entry door which had something carved in stone above it. I can’t clearly remember if it had stone columns or not, but it might as well have. To me, it represented the repository of all the secrets of history and everything there was to know. One day mom took me in and signed me up for my very own library card.

I can still remember the smell of all the books and the smooth leather tops on the tables. It was one of maybe two buildings in Horton that had air conditioning at that time, and I remember how much pure joy and relief I felt upon entering on one of those hot, sultry Kansas afternoons. Although the library was small by today’s standards, my recollection is of a great maze of freestanding heavy oak shelves nearly reaching the ceiling. Every wall was covered with an expanse of shelves, broken only once in a while by a window. The fancy new fluorescent lighting made every corner bright as day; the floor was covered in some kind of hard tile that reflected and seemed to amplify the very smallest noise or whisper such that it could be heard across the street. The big oak main desk was directly in front of the entry door and was usually occupied by a lady whose chief purpose seemed to be dusting, shushing noisy kids and periodically helping people find books. She was nice enough to teach me the Dewey Decimal system so I wouldn’t have to bother her. Usually though, I would just poke around the shelves and select a few books at random to sit with over by the air conditioner. Most of the time, I had the place to myself.

Here is where I learned there was such a thing as comic books and a newer, different Encyclopedia Britannica. Many of the things I had read in my mother’s 1936 Britannica edition were now remarkably different. The whole discussion of atoms now included references to something called nuclear energy and hydrogen bombs. I had heard some of the old people talking about that, as well as someplace called Russia. A lot of countries had changed names. The Wizard of Oz was a favorite movie and I happily discovered Frank Baum had written several additional books about that world. Tarzan was a popular Saturday afternoon television show and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books led me to the Time Machine and John Carter of Mars. Huckleberry Finn, Tom Swift, Jules Verne, and many other names rush back to me like a big wave. 

Yes, it is fair to say I became a bookworm. There was so much to learn and I wanted to know it all. I maintained a broad range of interests, although this finally coalesced into more technical and scientific stuff than, say, theater and literature. This had its own set of ramifications for my life, not all of them positive. I eventually grew up, did well in school, and seem to have had a successful career. Many people (such as my wife and a lot of former employees) would describe me as often having a lot of different irons in the fire at once, maybe too many. I am someone who knew a little about a lot of different things, but not really enough about any one thing to be an expert. Therefore, I was kind of a natural chief executive. 

My recollections of work include a lot of organizational initiatives and change efforts. Much of that activity was based on some management theory, or the best practices employed by other utilities, or something else I had read about. Probably my most accurate critics would observe that we tried to do too much at once without actually firmly completing the execution of many of the things we tried before starting something else. That may all be true. Nonetheless, I still think we had one of the cutting-edge organizations and our stats generally supported that characterization.

Now I am retired and doing other things with my time. I am bemused at the number of times I find myself consulting Google or Amazon in order to locate a source of information to read about whatever it is I want to do--whether it’s how to paint with watercolor, apply a particular finish to a furniture project, or play a particular bridge convention. The common thread throughout most of my life’s activity is the act of reading…..a skill my mother made sure I had at a very early age. I know my grandkids are being taught to read, and I am sure they will become highly skilled, but it just won’t be the same for them without that big old Britannica. As fast as everything is moving now, it will probably be better.