Equilibrium
Yesterday I was walking between rooms and my foot caught on one of Kaitlyn's toys that had fallen out of its collecting basket. Mid-fall I found my body, subconsciously, flailing about in a desperate attempt to reconquer my center-of-gravity. I can only imagine that I looked like a drug-induced goose trying to dance swan lake, on ice (although, in fairness, I've never actually seen that and, as such, cannot vouch for its visual accuracy to my described predicament). Maybe it was my five years of martial arts devoted to constantly knowing my head-to-floor distance. Maybe, unbeknownst to me, one of my cats heroically dove into my back to help me reposition. Maybe I've just got a killer inner-ear. Whatever the reason, I regained myself and continued through the room, my knee slightly worse from the twisting.
But, clearly, the experience got me thinking about what subconscious mechanisms we have that constantly measure our equilibrium, and how these mechanisms might repeat themselves in certain non-inner-ear related ways. So, here, for you, is my theory on equilibrium and how it almost destroyed my home.
It's really quite a simple theory: as new things are added to our lives we either match our surroundings to this new thing or we match this new thing to our surroundings. Or we lead a shabby chic psychotic existence, which is equally possible but unbefitting to my theory and, as such, is conveniently omitted.
Proof? How often have you purchased a new suit or outfit and needed to update accessories? Has a new painting inspired a new wall color? Has a new chair begotten a new rug? That new computer game sired a new monitor, didn't it? Such luxury possessions are actors and our envisioned experience is their play. When our Sean Connery is too old to play James Bond to our brand new Halle Berry, we toss it aside and purchase a new Pierce Brosnan. Or something like that.
Our last luxury purchase was a large-screen television. One of the things that most impressed me about the television was the multitude of connections available in the back of this set. My inner-engineer was intrigued -- I simply had to find a way to plug each of these inlets. Clearly, my home electronic equilibrium was out of balance....
I needed to find a way to bring 8 bajillion wires into my living room, post-haste. How does one run so many wires into one's living room? You need to open up a few walls! And, clearly, the best thing to do it drop 2" diameter PVC piping through the walls to make running even more cables in the future easier. How do you run so much piping through the walls? Easy! All it takes is a hammer and some guts..
I'm jumping over some stories here that I will post about later. Let's suffice it to say that it took some events to get to that large hole. Let's play where's waldo.... can you see the section of drywall that was already starting to be patched? Can you see the hole at the bottom fo the bulkhead? Can you see the large sheet-metal clad cold-air return directly under the living room wall that had to be cut into? Sure you can!
Of course, when running pipe between two points, you need a second point, which means another hole closer to the exterior wall of the house where the cable comes in.
Here, the PVC pipe routes cables from the living room into the joists right next to the cold-air return.... why? It isn't code to run things lengthwise in a cold-air return. Do you see the hole drilled about 8 inches to the right of the PVC? That hole is a blog entry all by itself...
Both the exterior cable and the cables/network cards from the living room meet and are routed to my "distribution hubs" located in a secret, undisclosed location in the basement. For maximum security, they are located behind the kitty litter boxes. So far, we have multiple cable and Ethernet runs with nylon ropes so we can pull more things through in the future.
After lots of drywall, lots of dust, lots of cussing, and lots of trips to Lowes my house, at least, regained equilibirum as my new big-screen TV now has 4 out of 6 inputs filled, and my house re-wiring project is well underway.
A funny side note, but the last coat of paint on the ceiling repair work was completed at 2am on the day of Linda's surprise 30th birthday bash. That, too, is another blog entry.
-Ed
But, clearly, the experience got me thinking about what subconscious mechanisms we have that constantly measure our equilibrium, and how these mechanisms might repeat themselves in certain non-inner-ear related ways. So, here, for you, is my theory on equilibrium and how it almost destroyed my home.
It's really quite a simple theory: as new things are added to our lives we either match our surroundings to this new thing or we match this new thing to our surroundings. Or we lead a shabby chic psychotic existence, which is equally possible but unbefitting to my theory and, as such, is conveniently omitted.
Proof? How often have you purchased a new suit or outfit and needed to update accessories? Has a new painting inspired a new wall color? Has a new chair begotten a new rug? That new computer game sired a new monitor, didn't it? Such luxury possessions are actors and our envisioned experience is their play. When our Sean Connery is too old to play James Bond to our brand new Halle Berry, we toss it aside and purchase a new Pierce Brosnan. Or something like that.
Our last luxury purchase was a large-screen television. One of the things that most impressed me about the television was the multitude of connections available in the back of this set. My inner-engineer was intrigued -- I simply had to find a way to plug each of these inlets. Clearly, my home electronic equilibrium was out of balance....
I needed to find a way to bring 8 bajillion wires into my living room, post-haste. How does one run so many wires into one's living room? You need to open up a few walls! And, clearly, the best thing to do it drop 2" diameter PVC piping through the walls to make running even more cables in the future easier. How do you run so much piping through the walls? Easy! All it takes is a hammer and some guts..
I'm jumping over some stories here that I will post about later. Let's suffice it to say that it took some events to get to that large hole. Let's play where's waldo.... can you see the section of drywall that was already starting to be patched? Can you see the hole at the bottom fo the bulkhead? Can you see the large sheet-metal clad cold-air return directly under the living room wall that had to be cut into? Sure you can!
Of course, when running pipe between two points, you need a second point, which means another hole closer to the exterior wall of the house where the cable comes in.
Here, the PVC pipe routes cables from the living room into the joists right next to the cold-air return.... why? It isn't code to run things lengthwise in a cold-air return. Do you see the hole drilled about 8 inches to the right of the PVC? That hole is a blog entry all by itself...
Both the exterior cable and the cables/network cards from the living room meet and are routed to my "distribution hubs" located in a secret, undisclosed location in the basement. For maximum security, they are located behind the kitty litter boxes. So far, we have multiple cable and Ethernet runs with nylon ropes so we can pull more things through in the future.
After lots of drywall, lots of dust, lots of cussing, and lots of trips to Lowes my house, at least, regained equilibirum as my new big-screen TV now has 4 out of 6 inputs filled, and my house re-wiring project is well underway.
A funny side note, but the last coat of paint on the ceiling repair work was completed at 2am on the day of Linda's surprise 30th birthday bash. That, too, is another blog entry.
-Ed
posted by Ed at 1:16 AM
1 Comments:
Oh my! Looking forward to hearing about it all. :)
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