Complain A-blog It.

Yes, Interwebs. I just coined my 93rd term. I'm feeling irked and instead of going and complaining about it, I'm going to complain a-blog it. Get the coinage? I sure hope so.

I'm very fortunate to have moved into a condominium that has new electrical. I'm also very fortunate to have a buff delivery guy stopping by on Tuesday to deliver a dishwasher to said condominium. So, naturally, I started preparatory measures. I moved the cat litter, because Sergent Chester (see blog about him here) needs his time to adjust. He's also been fairly fond of pooping where Sasha, my new dishwasher, will be whoring the dishes. I also investigated. I got to thinking (which I do rarely) and thought the following: I will need a plug for Sasha, and I will need some way to feed her daily whorish ration of water. Now, here's where I get irked.

The man (for this blog, we will call him Jay-z) who was foreclosed on took his dishwasher. He also took said daily-whorish-water-rationing pipes. And, (cue IRK), he took the outlet that will power Sasha's hurricane-like speed. Without that outlet, she will simply lay there, and no one likes a dish-washing whore who just lays there, soaked, in her own whorish rations.

So, I went and bought a project box, a GFI, and some electrical wire. I took apart the LIGHT SWITCH that Jay-Z decided should go under the sink where the old outlet used to be. (I give him slight props here, because the condo would not have passed inspection had it housed bare wiring under a sink. A light switch, however, can be put anywhere you'd like.)

I went downstairs to turn off the kitchen's circuit (I'm not a complete idiot), and found that all nine circuit breakers are -- you guessed it -- unmarked by the master electrician who did all 14 units at the same time. So, I went box to box searching other peoples breakers until I found a labeled set. Score two for master electrician: they were not in the same order as mine. Let me rephrase. No two breaker boxes were in the same order. So, I used my common sense and just turned off a few of mine, went upstairs, and tested the light switch's wires. Well, it took me four tries, but here's what I found.

• My bathroom is wired to my dining room, which are on opposite sides of the unit.
• The overhead lights in the living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry are all on the same breaker.
• The pantry's outlets are connected to my bedroom outlets. Again, on the opposite side of the unit.
• My living room outlets are connected to my dining room outlets, which makes more sense than any of the other points above.
• My kitchen is separated by three breakers.  

And, my favorite bullet point of all:

• The light switch's breaker is connected to, and only to, the outlet on the other side of the kitchen.

So, after I turned off most of the electricity in my unit, I was able to disassemble Jay-Z's pointless light switch and found that the conventional wiring (white is negative, black is positive, green is ground) was nonstandard.  White is negative (YAY), blue is positive (wtf?) and orange is ground (bigger WTF). I wired up the light switch again, but this time it turns on power to a GFI outlet that will feed Sasha her necessary power.

So, long story short, the electrician who re-did these units was an idiot, and Jay-Z left me a great light switch that will turn Sasha on whenever she is needed. ;)

Your mileage may vary.

-j

•