Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Persistence

This is a true story that may get me committed!

Recap:

I started to decorate my Christmas tree over a week ago and when I went to string the last strand of white lights, only half of it would light. To my astonishment, the following retailers were all out of white lights:
Wal-mart
Meijer
Home Depot
Lowes
Michaels
Target
Giant Eagle
Kohls

Obviously some sort of local shortage that the media hasn't picked up on.
Solution:
1. I checked both fuses in the little light plug and they were fine.
2. I started systematically taking out each bulb that wasn't lit and testing it and throwing it into a pile if it was still good.
3. When I found a dead bulb, I would change it out for a working one and put back in all the other working ones in hopes that it would light.
4. All of my extra bulbs were in different casings, so I needed to actually remove the dead bulb from it's casing to put the new bulb in it's casing to plug it into the strand.

5. When I plugged in my strand after the 3rd dead bulb was replaced, I was overjoyed to see the whole thing light. I kept staring at it in disbelief and aprox. 20 seconds later, half of it started to BLINK! Oh the shock.

6. Of course, I had no idea which was the blinker bulb and I didn't even know where the 3 replaced bulbs were now as I didn't keep track of that.

7. So, it was back to starting at the beginning and taking each bulb out one at a time and plugging a new bulb in and then waiting 20 seconds to see if it would blink.

8. I thought that all blinker bulbs had a little red tip on them, but since I didn't use any like that, that is obviously not true. But that also meant that I could not use any of my extra bulbs as test bulbs since I wouldn't know if they were blinkers or not.

9. I went to the Christmas tree and removed one of the bulbs from the working strands to be my tester.
10. On aprox. the 20th bulb, the strand stopped blinking and the world rejoiced.

11. I noticed one dead bulb on the 1/2 of the strand that originally worked so I replaced it and the second half wouldn't light up anymore.

12. I berated myself for messing things up by being fanatical and replaced the same bulb again and it all lit up.

13. I put the strand on the tree and plugged it in and the first half was dead again.

14. I counted to 100, remained calm and started at the beginning of the dead area, pulling out a bulb, testing it, putting it back in, marking my spot with a little clip, plugging it back in and when it still wouldn't light, unplugging it and repeating.

15. Halfway through while testing some of the bulbs on the back of the tree, my prim and proper cat came and sat with me and immediately passed gas and I really thought this was all some sort of bizarre punishment.

16. Somewhere around the 20th or 30th bulb, I found a dead bulb, replaced it, plugged it in and the whole strand lit!
THE END

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