Tuesday, December 16, 2014

My Christmas Light Display of This Year

I've been praying for this moment to come and then my prayer had been answered. I finally figured out what was wrong with that new circuit that I received from an expert electrician. He told me and my Mom that I needed to press the reset button for a few seconds before assuming that it won't work anymore. He also explained that the brown and white cords that I'm using outside are supposed to be indoor use only. 


Since the new circuit turned out to be GFI, it means that it won't electrocute or shock anybody in the process, but if it ever rains or snows, the water would go into the outlets and it would cause the GFI circuit to trip, meaning to shorten out and not work, unless it has been reset. He also said that I need to replace the brown and white cords into the green cords that are waterproof. 


Even through all that stress, I finally can let the lights keep going on with the neighbors until the day after Christmas. I've taken these pictures before the Circuit issue occurred. I hope that you like it so much. It's been up since the day before Thanksgiving. It might be close to a Disney display (I wish I had almost a lot more Disney characters in the display so that I can make it Disneyland Christmas Light styled), but there are other things that are added to the display, like the nativity, Gingerbread house and gingerbread man and gingerbread woman, and then Santa Paws. You may have noticed that we don't have snow on our lawn or on our house this year, probably because my Mom has been praying for no snow until the day before Christmas, so she won't be stressed through all the fuss to get things ready before the last minute of Christmas and before the last minute of getting my brother, The Beast, to get married in the Salt Lake temple with Beauty. I bet you would all think that's romantic and sweet. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm still glad that I have a new circuit and figured out how to solve the problem if it ever happens again, so that I can be less stressed of putting up holiday displays every year. I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you. :) 






Monday, December 15, 2014

Stressed with Christmas Lights.

I'm sorry that it took me a very long time ever since I got to write a blogpost on mine. The reason it's been a long time is because I've been busy trying to catch up with the rest of the semester to go through the hard math, especially talking about inequalities, square roots, quadratic formulas, and graphing. I've been stressed out for about five years griping about putting up lights for Christmas every year. Every time, I plug in the lights in one circuit, they just go out. For this year, we got a new circuit that would hopefully not shorten out anymore. The new circuit seemed to be working very well at first, and it was working in the first week after Halloween. We had some rain for last weeks, and only a little bit of snow, because my Mom is getting very busy trying to get things ready for Christmas and another event called my brother, The Beast, (which used to be Gym Rat, but he never liked it) getting married to a nice girl named Beauty. The rain kept falling down and then it would stop and some lights on the house would keep on. Then suddenly that new circuit that was bought for the display on Halloween stopped working for me, my Mom and my sister, Bossy, kept telling me that I'm using inside extension cords that aren't good for outdoor use. I kept checking to see if it was true. I unplugged the cords and try to dry the cords out with a blow dryer because rain could go through them, I checked to see if it solved the problem, but it never did. I noticed that I saw a yellow light from the new circuit and saw words saying "Wet Locations with tab closed" I thought it meant that it needed to rest a bit from the wet grass and see if it solved the problem. I waited for a couple of days, but it still didn't fix. Before my Dad left for Boston for his job, he suggested I duct tape the empty outlets from the cords to see if it helped to keep the rain from going in. I tried that, but nothing ever helped the circuit to operate again.

My sister Bossy, kept saying that the brown and white extension cords instead of the green ones are indoor use instead of both. I believed her, but I doubted it. I unplugged one cord that was operated from the circuit and then plugged it into the power-strip that was on our porch operating the other lights perfectly. I noticed that the lights that were from the new circuit worked from the outlet on the porch. I started to have a feeling that it's not the cords that are causing the problem, but it's the circuit itself. I've tried almost every attempt to reset that circuit, but I'll it kept showing was a yellow light right by the outlets. I kept trying to prove to Bossy and Mom that it's the circuit itself, but they kept thinking it's the cords. I've kept trying and trying and trying to see if it solved anything. Unfortunately, nothing happened. I wanted to prove to my Mom that it's the circuit that isn't working, not the cords, but she kept insisting that it's the cords.

I even prayed to figure out if there would be anyway to get the circuit fixed before Christmas comes next week. I wanted to impress my neighbors again, but I feel embarrassed to even face the neighbors. It may be hard to explain to them about what happened. I feel like I'm the boy who cried wolf and nobody believed me. I'm just going to have to keep praying to see if the new circuit will be able to work again before next Thursday. Hopefully. :) :(