Saturday, July 29, 2006

Yet Another Day At The Pool

Trouble Times Three

Great, another pool pictures post. Good thing that's not getting old. There is some stuff after the pools pictures that I could use help on, so skip to that if you're not interested in the pool pictures. Today Catherine decided she wanted some company at the pool since we're Quinn is still in Richmond. So we invited Rob, Gretchen, Autumn and Tyler to join us as well as Karen and Amanda.


Rob gets bonus points for making me, the original poster boy for pasty white guy, look tan in comparison. Nothing like having another software engineer around to make it all look relative. I didn't take a lot of photos (I think it was under 100 for the day), but I lent Rob the camera for a while so he could play with it. The poor guy is still using a Cannon Powershot G2. I had one of those before I got the D70 and I just couldn't stand the 800+ millisecond delay between pressing the button and having it take a picture. It took nice shots, but that delay made me miss so many shots it just drove me nuts.

I Think The Subject Is Out Of Focus (*cough*)


In The Deep End


I Need More Cake Ingredients


It's All About Accessorizing



Mmmm... Pizza

Tyler was a bit intimidated by the bigger pool and hung out in the kiddie pool most of the time. Autumn was also a little intimidated by the bigger pool initially, but eventually all the girls were having lots of fun over in the big pool. For lunch we ordered Papa Johns pizza and had it delivered to the pool. The sun was apparently very strong today as both Catherine and Ginger ended up getting burned. I personally feel really warm, but don't think I burned (at least I hope I didn't). I'm hoping everyone else escaped getting burned also.

Mom! She's Giving Me "The Look"

After everyone left, we came home and cleaned up. Ginger and Catherine took a nap. I watched a couple of episodes of 24 (Season 3). At this point I'm wondering just how many really bad days can this Jack Bauer guy have. Once I had fulfilled my veg quotient for the day I started in on my Honeydew list from Ginger. One of which is to install a new lamp in the ceiling of the library. Once I got the cover off though, I found several wires, none of which I was able to find current on with my nifty current detector. There are 3 wires in addition to an obvious metal ground. The wires are red, black and white. But I think the reason I couldn't find the current was the wires were completely covered and had been painted at the ends.

So after Ginger and Catherine got up, we headed over to Home Depot to buy a wire cutter / stripper. And then while we were out I stopped by CompUSA and bought a new 250 Gig hard drive. At this point we're on a roll doing errands, so we all went to the mall to look at a Chase something or other (some lounge chair looking thing) that Ginger might like to buy. Then we had dinner at the mall since we were already there (Arby's). And on the way home as we were walking through Jacque Pené I found a ton of shirts (okay, okay, more like 12) on a really good sale. It rang up around $120 dollars, then the cashier said there was a sale coupon in that day's paper for $10 off if you bought $50 (which I must say it's really nice that they don't actually require you to have the coupon and just give it to you). Bonus. At this point though I'm thinking, you know, had I known that I could have divided up my stuff into two purchases of $60 each and gotten $10 off of two purchases instead of $10 off just the one purchase (yes, that's what I do, I look for ways to work the system).

Eventually we came home and put Catherine to bed (after slathering her and Ginger with some aloe). From there I started in on the ceiling lamp again. So after exposing some of each wire with my new stripper, I was able to find current (I had the light turned off while I was stripping it obviously). But I only saw trace of the current when I touched the Black and White or the Red and White wires. The Red and Black wires together didn't register anything. So my question to all those electrically inclined folks out there is if I'm not putting in a ceiling fan and just using a regular lamp, which wires get combined? Do I twist tie together the red and black? Or something else. Seems like the white wire was the constant in the equation for power passing through it so that's why I'm guessing I should be combining the red and black. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyway, if there's no update tomorrow, it's probably because I picked the wrong wires and I'm in the hospital.

3 comments:

The Dogfather said...

Sounds like it's a receptacle that's part of a three-way switch. Do NOT just twist any of the pairs off. Are there two light switches that ~might~ both go to that fixture location? It is possible that they also made it to work with a ceiling fan that would have independent switching (i.e., one circuit powers the light, the other the fan). As a generic statement: The black, white, and ground are the ones you want to use and if you ignore (by ignore I mean wire nut closed) the red wire, you should be ok. Don't leave any exposed wiring, and use wire nuts they make it easier.

You could also open the wall switch plate that the ceiling fixture runs to, and examine the wiring there. More information is always a good thing.

((Ginger, remember if he's twitching with his hand caught, use something non-conductive to knock him off the wires. *grin*))

Scott said...

Uh, I'm pretty sure the AWB on your camera is out of kilter in the -rb photo. He cannot possibly be that white. Surely the exposure settings is wrong... right?

And, thanks for the eye candy on the "cough" picture. I was wondering after "Man Candy" and "Boy Fishing."

(Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

I'm reminded of the following: "I bet you're gay. No I'm not!"

Barry said...

Just for a second source, I echo dogfather's instructions. Tie the red and black together, you're starting to scare to me.