Another Major Melt Down

That is a compressor motor capacitor. Well, actually that is a thoroughly charred motor capacitor.

You kinda always know when something is not working quite as well as it should be. Saturday night when I got home it was about 78 degrees on the top floor, noticeably warmer than I usually keep it. Something was clearly not right. The longer I paid attention to it, the situation became clear that my AC was running but not doing a whole lot all night long. Great as this is all I need to have heaped on me right now.

Well, rewind three or four weeks ago, I had the same problem with the upstairs AC. Turns out the capacitor for the compressor had failed and needed to be replaced. The job of this little guy is the keep the voltage going to the motor in the compressor constant since the source is alternating current. I certainly thought that this would fix my problem for good but it did not. It seems like the compressor was in the process of becoming more inefficient and failing as it was drawing more and more voltage through this poor capacitor. This time, all of the wiring and the compressor failed with the capacitor. I think the power coming on instantaneously after the hurricane and the compressor starting was all it needed for the whole thing to be on a road to failure.

Everything is melting down.

One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty Three

Let's just start with mid June.

Since 6/14/2008 alone, I have sent 1,283 emails from my primary email account. I venture that approximately 85% of those are associated with my job search. Even if I conservatively sort them by category and use lower value of 76% to estimate the number of emails that I have sent as a part of my job search, that is still about 980 emails. Based upon business days, that means I send about 13.4 emails a day. Throw in my secondary email address and that estimate probably approaches 17 or 18 per day.

That would be 18 carefully crafted, considerate, and value added introductions to um.....me, every day. I suppose if you are working a full time job, that really is not a big number. But if you consider sending that many as a part of a job search, I think it becomes apparent how hard I have been working to examine every corner of the job market.

1,283 - that is our number for the day. This is how bad things are out there.

All Over Again

Well I can't say that I saw these turns in my career coming when I went to grad school. Things are very different now in our world and I am becoming keenly aware of how fragile life as we know it as an citizen of this country is. To be honest, the fluctuations and turmoil that we are seeing in the financial markets are something that I have seen coming for quite a while now. What I did not see coming was the possibility of me being in the middle of it all. This is Enron all over again but worse. Much worse.


What's for dinner? Skirt Steak. Maybe I did miss my culinary calling.

After Ike

Well I got back to Houston yesterday afternoon. I have to say everything is fine and pretty much just as I left it - there is nothing for me to complain about. Also all of my utilities are on and I only lost the contents of my refrigerator. I was surprised to head out this morning and find grocerty stores stocked for the most part and I was able to re-stock some staple items and get the kitchen back functioning. Over all Houston did really well through the storm and there is not a lot of damage at all. It seems like there are a lot of people still without power in the suburbs but that is getting better by the day.

Ike

Well if anybody is posting in or wondering what I am up to with the storm, I am fine.

I came home to Alabama yesterday and surprised mom with a visit. This visit home to see mom actually had nothing to do with leaving for the storm and I was scheduled to head back to Houston today. Looks like the storm will come somewhere south and west of the Galveston coast on Friday night so I am gonna stay here for the weekend and go back on Monday. I am sure the house will be fine and the worse will probably be having no power for a day or so which is the reason I am staying here until Monday.