Subject: Weekend Update: Addendum September 9-11, 2002
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 09:44:54 -0400

I completed the work on the ceiling fan last night.

When I got home on Monday, Joy had called our friend and
near neighbor Jim Dee, who is an electrician by trade.  My
heart sank a little when I saw his truck because I thought
I was finally beginning to figure it all out.  But Joy could
sense my building frustration withthis project and thought
that I'd suffered enough so she called in a professional.

Fortunately, this professional didn't charge us because all
he did was confirm that the red wire in the ceiling fan and
the red wire in the switch box were not the same red wire.
We had several choices: (1) make the light and fan always
run together; (2) take off the light attachement and have
just a fan, like before, but always on the high setting; or
(3) take it down and buy an electronic model.  We thanked
Jim for his time and sent him home.  He said he'd come back
if we needed him.

When Jim got home down the street, he called and suggested
that the two red wires probably meet in a junction box and
with a little rewiring we could get power to the red wire
in the ceiling.  I was ready to just remove the light fixture,
but pleasing one's wife is a powerful motivator, so instead
I put that plan aside for some more investigation.

The junction box is high up on an upper beam, half buried
under the sloped ceiling's drywall.  I climbed the railing
in the loft and leaned out as far as I could on the beam
and was able to unscrew the screw on the top plate.  Inside
was even more spaghetti than the switch box.  All the
electricity to the Barn went through this box, which had
no fewer than 8 wire caps and probably 30 wires squeezed
into it.  I was finally able to see a red wire but I was
very reluctant to pull out the tightly packed mass of wire,
so I got down to think things over, ready to remove the
light fixture again.

The next morning Joy and I discussed our options.  She asked
me to look at a switch that she had bought at Home Depot.  I
thought we had been through Electricty 101 several times; there
was only 1 power feed to the ceiling so our options were clear.
But lo and behold, this switch had black and white wires going
into it and black, white,  and blue wires coming out of it. 
It was designed to split the current between the fan and the
light. Joy had the answer to the ceiling fan problem all
along.

When I got home on Tuesday, I put on shorts and a tee shirt
and my sneakers and climbed up the staging again.  I have less
fear on the staging now than I do the weariness of the exercise
on the monkey bars.  I made the connections, put a battery in
the transmitter and turned on the circuit breaker.  It worked!
Off went the circuit breaker one last time so that I could tape
up the wires and tuck them into place.  I closed up the fan to
the ceiling and put on the lamp goblets.  I climbed down and
reattached the switch box plate.  We had to wait one more day,
however, for the job to be complete because Joy needed to buy
vibration-resistant light bulbs - I don't want to have to change
these bulbs for a good long time!

When we got home from church on Wednesday night, I prepared to
go aloft for the final time and screw in the light bulbs that Joy
picked up that day.  Joy also asked me to wash the window while I
was up there, and I agreed.  Before I could scale the scaffold,
Andrew came to me complaining that the computer was acting funny.
I spent a half hour restoring the computer from what looked like
another virus (sircam32.exe again!).  Fortunately, I still had
the patch files from the last time I was hit.  I fixed it and went
up again.  I was screwing in the final bulb when the kids come running
in telling me that the computer monitor is smoking and that they
powered down the system.  (I did notice the display twitching a bit
while I was restoring from the virus.) I scrambled down again,
pulled the monitor out to the kitchen to plug it in there and it
smelled like its transformer (or something) was fried.  Fortunately
for kids who needed to type a report for homework, I had Jessica's
crippled-but-usable monitor (display is missing some colors; on its
last legs) which enabled them to do their job and me to do mine!

Up again, I washed the window.  Then I spent the next half hour or
so trying to balance the blades on the fan to reduce its wobble.
I can't tell you how much I am glad this job is over so that I can
focus on scraping paint off the outside of the barn while standing
on a slippery metal roof.

Mark