(no subject)
Being an engineer and a self-described environmentalist, it is against my nature to buy the cheap products advertised on end-caps in department stores. I’m extremely wary of the quality. (I also live in a house with a compost crock and we throw away 1/4 the garbage of anyone in the neighborhood on trash day.) But you have to question your own purchasing rationale when you see this sort of price comparison…
String of white lights:
Home Holiday Brand (indoor/outdoor) $1.99
GE Pro Outdoor $9.99
$1.99? How can they possibly source materials and manufacture for such a low price, I marvel? But last year, when I needed seven strings of white lights to decorate the three little pines at the entrance to my home, I caved. It doesn’t take a math wizz to conclude that $14 is a more palatable payout than $70. Those cheap lights worked great… last year.
Cut to this year: After a full day of skiing-half of it with the fledgling, which means we weren’t moving fast enough to stay warm-the Boy Wonder and I pulled on our headlamps and went out to string the lights in the freezing cold. Starting from the top of the tree and working down, we eventually strung all seven sets. (Why top down, you ask? Well, we were working in a tight space and didn’t want to trip over the cords, for one. Secondly, 2pr tells you that it’s easier to make length adjustments at the bottom of the cone, as well as being easier to reach.) So with pink cheeks, we wrapped the last strand and plugged the cords in. Now I know how Chevy Chase felt in Christmas Vacation...
We stared at the dark outline of an unlit pine tree.
One of us made an accurate guess that the outdoor circuit breaker had been tripped OFF. We threw it back ON, newly expectant, and the one set of GE Pro Outdoor lights I’d bought a year prior twinkled merrily to life at the top. Not yet knowing why the rest of the lights still weren’t working, we unstrung one tree-worth and pulled them inside for a little 9pm test/debug session.
What we have here is a plug connected to a pair of fuses connected to the string of lights. “Must be a blown fuse if all the lights are out,” I reasoned.
Out came the ridiculous little packet of spare fuses and bulbs. I heaved myself down on the rug and began tinkering. Just a simple fuse change. Easy enough, right? To my dismay, the fuses were so cheaply made that half of the terminations broke off during replacement. After finally replacing the fuses on one strand, the lights still didn’t turn on. It was my turn to flip through a magazine, annoyed.
Boy Wonder began a little scientific-method-driven bulb replacement session. Finally he looked up. “Every single light is blown,” he pronounced.
I leaned in and looked more closely at the bulbs’ glasses and saw little black clouds I hadn’t noticed before.
“There must have been a power surge when we threw the breaker,” I postulated. During page flips, I had noticed the Boy testing the old fuses I'd replaced (in a working set of indoor lights) and I was curious to know the diagnosis. “Fuses were blown, too, then?”
“Fuses are good.”
“Fuses are-good?”
Affirmative nod.
“Wait a minute! You’re telling me that every light is blown but the fuses are all good?”
Affirmative nod.
“WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THESE LIGHTS???”
I’m no electrical engineer, but I know this much: a fuse, short for 'fusible link', is a type of overcurrent protection device. It has as its critical component a metal wire or strip that will melt when heated by a prescribed electric current, opening the circuit of which it is a part, and so protecting the circuit from an overcurrent condition. (Wikipedia)
“Some nitwit spec’d out the wrong fuse! Or… that fuse is so cheap, it didn’t do its job!”
At 10PM, still in ski jackets, we rallied ourselves to the nearest department store, scowling at everything Home Holiday brand, to buy new lights. Suddenly, $70 for a good set of lights didn’t seem so bad anymore. We eventually finished stringing the new lights, while calling out movie quotes -"We’re almost there Rusty!” -smooched, half-frozen, under the Hallelujah glow, and finally, tucked into bed.
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Rated D for Dorky