The previous owner of our house was a mechanical (or electrical, I can't remember) engineer. It was clear that he did a pretty good job of upkeep around the house and probably knew every inch of it. He prided himself on doing a lot of the maintenance work himself.

Every time I do something manual or handy, I say "the spirit of Joel Cohen lives on."

Since we moved in, we've been installing the X-10 system (or I should say, it's been installed) which allows for remote control of the lights throughout the house. Most of the work was done by our contractor.

Two weeks ago, he installed the final light (the one which enables the outside lights to go on at dusk and off at dawn-automatically-throughout the year--it's calibrated to the latitude and longitude of the house), but in doing so, he made it impossible to turn on the dining room light.

Initially, I called him to repair it, but then I thought, "hey, if I'm the captain of this ship, I've got to know how to fix it all" (and this came on top of the fact that I'd spent many hours the week before up in the attic, repairing some insulation work). I shut off the electricity, opened up the switch, diagrammed it in color, made some hypotheses, tested, and eventually enabled all 4 lights that came together there, to work perfectly.

The spirit of Joel Cohen lives on....