High Tech, Low Tech

I spend my days doing different projects... cars, boats, honey do this. Yesterday I bought (at a huge discount) a program for boat design and started learning it and drawing in my latest version of the FLASH. I still have the deck salon, hatches, ports and a number of other things to add. I'll be able to layout the interior using objects in scale to the model... sinks, stoves, bathrooms, etc. That's hard to do with paper and pencil (although I have) because I tend to fudge the size of something if it looks better to me, though it wouldn't work out in reality.

So I'm working on an exterior and an interior model, which, some day I will post up here.

At the other end of the spectrum, the 1st Mate asked me to install an overhead fan in the "family area" of the house. This, dear reader, entails getting involved with Mexican wiring standards, so if you are easily upset or queasy, continue no further.

Mostly, Mexican electricians (ha ha) use metal junction boxes in the walls and ceilings. This box combines all the wiring for half the house, including the kitchen (think refrigerator, electric oven, toaster, juicer, blender, air conditioner, lighting, etc). The two orange wires dangling down aren't connected to anything electrical. They're used to tie the ceiling light fixture to the ceiling... (you just kinda' twist them around any protrusion of the fixture, and you're done).

Since Mexican electrical codes don't inform how far into the plaster one should install the junction box, the boxes tend to tilt in on one side, out on another, and never are lined up with anything... and we're talking about just one box. So, getting into the spirit of things, I rummaged around and pulled this metal cover off an old light fixture and set to mounting it in the hole in the ceiling.

Because it's soft metal, the cover molded itself to the opening with a nice tight fit, and within minutes the fan was up and running. The holes around the fixture will be puttied in later.