Engineers Take Heed
Lor is not an engineer. She will be the first to tell you that her brain does work anything like mine. This is most certainly a good thing, and is probably a big reason why our marriage will last. However, the other day, she come up with such an amazing solution to a problem that my engineer’s brain was utterly dumbfounded by its simplicity, elegance, effectiveness.
Last year before the Christmas decorating season, we bought one of those fake, metal, lighted Christmas trees that you see in front of everyone’s house. You know, the ones that cost about $75? Yeah those, the ones where one third of the lights stop working after about two weeks? Right. Well, ok, we bought one. This particular model came in 3 sections that you stack one on top of the other, and right on schedule, at about the two week mark, the lights on about half of the branches on the bottom portion of the tree stopped working. We decided to let it go that way for the remainder of the season and vowed to deal with it next year.
Now it’s next year, and after unpacking the tree, we remembered our vow. Of course, I was convinced that there was some simple explanation dealing with how the lights were wired, fuses, etc. So, we set out on our task of switching bulbs, replacing bulbs, examining fuses, and even bought new lamps (you know, just the glass bulb, filament, and conductor part without the plastic housing) and tried actually replacing some of the lamps. No dice. So we just put the tree out, half lit bottom section and all.
That evening, I had to run out for a meeting. Later, on the way home, as I drove toward the house, I was astonished to see the tree standing in our yard in its fully-lit glory. Wow, I thought, Lor must have found the fuse, or lamp, or loose wire that had eluded us earlier.
When I got inside, she asked if I noticed the tree. I told her I had, and I asked how she had found the offending fuse, lamp, or loose wire. “Nope”, she said, “I threw out the bottom section of the tree”. I was speechless, overwhelmed by the brilliance of this. The utter simplicity. I had not even noticed that the tree was now almost 2 feet shorter, and it was a sure bet that no one else in the world (or at least on our street) would notice this either, but I sure did notice the fact that the tree was fully lit!
All you engineers our there, take note. We could certainly look for solutions like this more often!
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