Titan's Big Adventure at My House of Mayhem

Because a story is always better with a dog, here is the incident summary of "Titan's Big Adventure." Because, whether you are troubleshooting a computer or mayhem in your house, a clear list showing cause, effect and solution is required.

1. Titan arrives at my house Thursday night, for a weekend at Nanny's dogsitting camp and performs his traditional "holy crap" panic pee on the floor.
2. At bedtime, Titan paces the floor crying until I realize he has no real fur coat, no body fat, and is freezing.
3. Blankies applied.
4. Friday the house gets colder and colder until the furnace finally gives up.
5. LOML is working another double shift.
6. The furnace, which is in the attic, can only be accessed by pull down attic stairs. Previous furnace repairpersons have refused to work on it. Calls to repairpersons are not returned.
7. Plus, Christmas ornaments are blocking access to the furnace, (organizing attic storage is on the TO DO when time list.)
8. Ornaments removed after midnight when LOML arrives home. He will leave again at 7 AM to return to work.
9. Furnace blinking "4" Airflow problem, possible bad blower motor. (2 year old furnace!)
10. "Sort of" dirty air filter removed. VOILA.
11. Takes time for house to warm up. Electric heaters on.
12. Saturday morning. 6 AM. Sleepy-sounding repairperson returns emergency call for help. (It was 10 degrees last night!) Thanks, we fixed it. (here is where it really reminds me of some of the "support desk" calls I have made for software/hardware assistance, only to end up solving the problem myself.)
13. Put on electric tea kettle.
14. Check email, watch news.
15. TV signal lost. Set Top Box not communicating.
16. Go to internet, follow set top box troubleshooting steps.
17. OMG, what is this mess of wires behind TV! (Another To Do when Time list item)
18. Half hour to untangle and organize wires.
19. Troubleshoot set top box, no result, go back to internet instructions.
20. Internet goes down.
21. Call brother in law — is your Cable/Internet down? Nope, it is just me.
22. Walk through reset of WiFi box with brother in law.("I have to do this 3 times a week...")
23. Still nothing.
24. Whatever happened to my tea? I need a break.
25. Teapot cold. No power in kitchen.
26.  Notice electric heater no longer on in living room
27. (lightbulb emoji!). Blown circuit breaker, realize Cable/Internet box in attic must be wired on that circuit.
28. Titan (the pup whose adventure this is) watches from under blankets on couch.
29. Open electrical box. (Sooner or later we were going to mark these breakers.)
30. Especially that one that used to always go when we tried to run the air conditioner and the microwave.
31. That one that looks like it is still on even though it isn't.
32. Play circuit breaker roulette. Offending breaker marked with red nail polish. VOILA!
33. Lights, cable, tea kettle! (quick, unplug that heater)
34. Titan finally gets to go outside and pee. (Thanks for not panicking!)
35. Tea, toasted bagel, TV and WiFi. Apple for Titan; he listened to my complaining and didn't make remarks about the dirty furnace filter and the overloaded circuit.
36. Realize that non-tv/cable wires are still in a ball behind the TV.
37. LOML is still at work.

    

    Thanks for the support Titan. Maybe I can comb my hair now,

    
    

    
    

The End? Still another day left in the weekend.


Filed under: Expanded troubleshooting steps for TV/WiFi/Tea Kettle/Random Lights outages.