I like the flow of electrons. It likes me. We get along wonderfully. I turn on a light and the electricity gnomes do their thing, causing visible light so I won’t stub my toe on the fridge.
I don’t however, like working on electrical stuff. I do it because I can and the Scottish in me won’t allow me to pay someone $75 an hour to do work that I can do. The reason I don’t like electricity goes back to, like most fears, my parents. One day my Dad asked me to work on the dryer at home with him. He assured me that he had pulled the fuse to the dryer, so I violated the first rule of Electrical Safety: Trust No One, Including Yourself.
When I grabbed the leads to disconnect the dryer, I saw a fascinating array of stars, glowing planets, little tweeting birds and flying musical notes. I was also upside down, splayed on my head, on the other side of the basement, about 20 feet away from the dryer. I also learned an interesting fact about my Dad: He can’t be trusted to tell the difference between a stove fuse and a dryer fuse.
For those of you who are not electrically minded let me simplify: With the power OFF, working on electrical wiring is as safe as you can be playing with stiff copper wire and hand tools. Don’t stick wire under your fingernails. Don’t poke yourself in the eye with the pliers and try not to drill a hole in your hand. The usual run-with-scissors kinds of safety stuff.
With the power ON, however, they be enough juice in dere to kill yer ass dead five times over. Touch the wrong thing and you get to see God, up-close and personal as He asks pointed questions regarding taking names in vain and some stuff regarding adultery. So, it was with some trepidation that I cracked open the breaker panel at Chateau 59 to hook up some stuff
The power is now resolved in the basement. All the computers run on separate outlets, protected from bad electric gnomes, rogue electrons and to quote Donald Sutherland, “negative vibes, man”. It was done without incident, safely, slowly and properly. I now don’t have to worry about it for a while until I set up that aluminum smelter or arc welder in the basement.
RoadDave 
Dude, the phrase is “negative waves”, as in, “Always with the negative waves, Moriarity, always with the negative ways”. I’m a “Kelly’s Heroes” junkie – when I was badly laid up by the headaches, I’d watch it 3-4 times a week.
As I said elsewhere, don’t worry, I’ve sucked up plenty of 110-volt juice. Keeps my hair straight. Worst hit happened when I was finishing up an outlet in a house with hot-water heat. Think a single-pipe radiator. I had hooked the wires to the outlet, mounted the outlet into the wall, and was putting on the outlet cover. My stockinged feet were against the heat pipe (grounded). My screwdriver slipped out of the slot of the screw that held the outlet cover on. Of course, it slipped into the “hot” side of the outlet. Blew me across the room, and the worst part was, I had braces at the time. (My father didn’t think of child labour as a sin, but as a necessity and a God-given reward for having had children.) I tasted steel for a week! (Okay, all together now.) That story was ……..
SHOCKING! (rimshot)
😀