Shocking, 3 and done

So last night after work I stopped at my mom’s on the way home with my meter so I could figure out what was wrong.  Of course I pull out the meter, hit the power button and it’s dead, the battery is toast…  SOB.  I pull the cover off the meter and see it runs on a 9 volt battery which I commandeered from one of mom’s smoke detectors.  Ok so I go out to the lanai and check the wires with the switch off, no juice as I would expect.  I tell mom to throw the switch.  I take another reading, still no juice.

Ok so I moved inside to the switch.  I pull the face plate off and decide to take a reading on the two screws on the side of the switch.  I reach in with the first probe and BLAM, a huge flash of light, a loud noise and me instantly dropping the probe and jumping backwards.  Obviously I grounded something out.  I looked at the probe.  About half of it had vaporized and what was left was a melted mess.  The meter itself was still functional.  Holy shit.

I don’t like admitting much scares me but electricity scares me.  I have had several run ins with electricity over the years that have not been favorable.  I remember when I just started at Entre computers I was assigned the job of pulling down a light fixture from the building we vacated.  The light was off so I assumed there was no power applied.  I took my cutters to one of the wires and was instantly knocked to the floor as electricity surged through the cutters and me.  Much like yesterday, the metal in the cutters was instantly melted.

Then there is the Buick incident.  The wiring in the dash shorted out somehow turning my beautiful convertible into a burned to bare metal pile of junk in the span of 15 minutes.  Ever since then, the smell of something that is electrically hot sets me into a mild panic as it reminds of the what I smelled right before the flames started shooting out of the dash.

If there was a positive to come out of the incident at mom’s it was that we now knew which breaker controlled that circuit as it tripped after my ill advised probing.  Mom’s next door neighbor is an electrician.  She is going to see if he can take a look to see why we aren’t getting juice out to the lanai.  I was fine with that. 

So the Phillies made the playoffs for the first time in 13 or 14 years.  I was mildly excited about it and hoped to catch the games.  I caught exactly one inning before they got swept away by the Rockies.  The first two games were at 3 and 4 in the afternoon so by the time I got home the games were done.  On Saturday night the game didn’t start until 9:37 pm.  I was exhausted from busting ass all day and fell asleep after watching the first inning.  It’s awesome that they made the playoffs but getting swept definitely stings a bit.

It is looking like the indian casinos in Florida are going to be getting “Vegas Style” slot machines as well as being able to run blackjack tables.  That would be very cool since blackjack is one of my games of choice.  It would give me more of a reason to venture 15 miles east to gamble once in awhile.