I Can Make...

[lwood]

...extension cords.

So many items among my miscellaneous electronica have small rechargeable batteries inside, and as batteries are DC and the wall current is AC, much of the charger's guts is taken up by a rectifier to perform this arcane transformation.

While some of these chargers have a bit or bob of electrical cord on each end, many do not, and thus, most of my rechargeable doodads sport singularly unlovely "wall warts", where the ungainly rectifier takes up far too much space at the outlet.

This will not do.

One answer is to have surge suppressor/power strips/etc that have larger spaces on board for the unsightly things, but this isn't always optimal: you may have more warts than big spaces, the strip as a whole may need to be in a difficult place, and so on.

Another is to have a veryveryshort (>=12"/30 cm) extension cord, fixing the terrible oversight made at the factory and thus slightly offsetting the problem. This is a more flexible solution, although it can cause a slightly different sort of chaos at the strip--more in a moment.

Now...I know one may purchase the very short cords, and indeed I have seen them in the store, but at about $10 apiece--which is bollocks, really. I pondered how to deal with this, and also how to organize all the bloody things into some more aesthetic form than "a jumble of cords with huge black tumors". I had come down to two real answers:

• The Chargepod from Callpod.
  • Pro: Elegantly arachnoid.
  • Cons: Buying just one and outfitting it with the tips countgeiger and I use (two ipod/iphone, one mini USB, one micro USB, one Plantronics 510/520) would cost $100 and purchase yet even still more redundant crap.


• A box in which to hold cables, wall warts, and all.
  • Pros: While not quite as elegant as the callpod, a box, whether purchased or DIY, would make use of chargers we already have and still be relatively aesthetic.
  • Cons: Still stupidly expensive to buy. But DIY...

I have decided to make my own goldurned charging station and put it in an inexpensive breadbox-sized wooden box. In musing about this, I'd earlier found instructions where one used small oval picture frames glued to a wooden box to signify Where Wires Come Out, although I can't find them for this post. So be it; I will look again later or boldly improvise.

Still, several wrongs about the home could be saved, even without this box, if I had some number of very short extension cords to give the outlets some breathing room from the evils of wall warts. Now what?

Well...

dpaxson and I went swimming today down at Oakland's own Lions Pool (pentaclemoon and mendou have been here with me too). We damply and limply squidged back to the car and lit for lunch at Compadres, at which I warned lay "Mexican for Gringos".

More amusingly than that...it was actually Mexican for not only gringos, but haoles--the menu mentioned "local flavor" that...wasn't local to Oakland. It turns out they have locations on Hawai'i too, and keep the same menu in both places.

BUT!

This one was across the street from both a hardware store and a Rat Radio Shack. Ooooo! Shiny! Dangerous! But then I remembered the vague desire for very short extension cords, and ambled into action (between sun and swim, I was only moving at an amble).

Thus, I strolled into the True Value and bought six feet (2 m) of light duty lamp cord (these chargers draw tiny amounts of power) and six sets of male and female ends. Oh, and a new pair of dikes, which kept shying away from the plug ends for some reason and cozying up to the socket ends...

AHEM!

Thus! This night I have wrought two footish (40 cmish) long extension cords, tested by the simple expedient of plugging in an old iPod and seeing if it charged--had something gone catastrophically wrong, I wouldn't want to sacrifice an iPhone, although the work Crackberry was nearly volunteered for the position.

Tomorrow Later today, I will demonstrate this to any Greyhaven resident minor who will listen. It will go nice with the earlier lesson of "help Lorrie pound a nine-foot long grounding rod into the backyard to protect the very shiny stereo from the flakey household wiring".

They were not raised on PBS home improvement shows like I was! Anime, horror, science fiction and fantasy? Faugh! A Jedi craves not These shows do not teach these things! How will they know how to wield screwdrivers and dikes for great justice if no-one shows them!? To say nothing of Allen wrenches, the mighty Torx, the giant redwood, the mighty scots pine, the larch--!

GOOD GODS, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

I mean, I'm not cool enough to keep locksmith tools in the car or nuffin, but a screwdriver--this I can manage. Also? Chili-lime mayonnaise. You would be surprised how many people wouldn't know how to make mayonnaise on pain of...pain.

Hey, what's this "sleep" thing I've heard so much about?

-- Lorrie (*thump* zzzzzzzz)

Comments

[wolfs-daugher.livejournal.com]

Hey, what's this "sleep" thing I've heard so much about?

Seriously overrated, from what I can tell.

Sparrow

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Sleep is for the weak!

...the healthy, well-rested, and weak, but weak nonetheless!

-- Lorrie

[technosomething.livejournal.com]

"Rest is for the weary, sleep is for the dead."

[shantak.livejournal.com]

Bwahahahaha Now I really want to know what kind of "local flavors" they mean. I didn't realize Compadres was a chain.

Fun with tools!

I know it is the weekend but you should get some sleep. :P

-Shanta

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Bwahahahaha Now I really want to know what kind of "local flavors" they mean. I didn't realize Compadres was a chain.

I seem to recall their idea of "local flavor" included pineapples, which was a "...wait, what?" sort of thing.

Fun with tools!

Indeed!

I know it is the weekend but you should get some sleep. :P

I caved in just after explaining to Sparrow that sleep was for the weak. 8-)

-- Lorrie

[shantak.livejournal.com]

*Hanging head in sleepy embarrassment* Turns out I didn't get to sleep until the sun was well up. I was lured into acting like a twenty-year-old by the last season of Avatar the Last Airbender. My roommate, who is in his twenties and has a larger store of sleep, watched all twenty-one episodes last night.

Hee hee, it was worth it. Well, I may not feel like that this afternoon but right now I do.

-Shanta

[remotesensing.livejournal.com]

You're bonding the new ground rod to the household service panel, right?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

>.<

The household anydamnthing is far away across the basement, involving not only the three-dimensional obstacle course of the piles of crap left by current denizens, former denizens, deceased and arguably former denizens, and deceased relatives of all of the above, but it would also require, eventually, dealing with the original house wiring (1909 in all its paper-wrapped on ceramic posts glory) plus the imaginative additions accreted over the years, primarily the work of, yes, another former denizen--who figured he could tackle anything, and while his costuming skills were very fine, I weep at his telephony cabling, which looks like it was done by LSD-crazed spiders. When they asked me to put in a new jack, I looked at the mess and declared it was time for wireless phones.

So.

No, not so much.

The computers and network gear in the office have really grounded outlets: there's a green ground cable that slips neatly around the room and--I have tested--does the job.

The significantly four-figured stereo system is plugged into a three-prong jack, which is grounded now, you betcha--it failed my tests earlier and, while passing the cable's coax through the surge suppressor did work to ground the surge suppressor (!), it shot the cable signal strength all to hell.

Hence the three-yard mighty rod, which I drove in something like a year ago, after my chant of "ground this, you paid a lot of money, here is how you get that grounded, you don't want this to asplode" got a lot of blank stares. I installed that damnthing, so I am possessive, hence copper o'doom.

The computer dpaxson uses for her novels, up in her Lonely Writer's Garret, is part of relatively new build by professionals who have actually Heard of Code. It's properly grounded.

Really, the house could use significant overhaul of several systems, but is not likely to get them. Patching whatever's currently critical has been the name of the game for some years--there is, happily, money for that, but given that the only significant income among the nigh-dozen residents is dpaxson's, there's not enough for more than that.

-- Lorrie

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

what is this screwdriver thing you speak of? i may not know tools but i CAN make mayonaisse if forced! :)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, it's also my mum's Official Airline Drink, although she may swap it for her perennial favorite, rum 'n' Diet Coke.

What a horrible thing to do to rum--even Bacardi Light doesn't deserve Diet Coke. Ptui!

-- Lorrie

[weofodthignen]

Funny you should talk of sleep, that was Blogathon, I was pulling ye olde all-nighter '-)

I see by "dikes" you mean "snips." Funny how much stuff that I have never used I nonetheless still know by the Brit names.

Frith,
M