Merry Christmas

This is Shloppy the Snowman.

Someone though he is made of snow

However, he tasted of marshmallow

And he's bleeding, the poor fellow

(Hey, its Christmas and I'm down with flu, ok?)
(So, I don't have the mood to draw Rudolph the Red-nose reindeer)

Christmas Dinner

I just found out that it is not easy for me to just curl up and die in this house without someone barging in halfway. With the Wife and kids staying the night at 6th SIL's house, I thought I could just weather my cold/flu/asthma in the room alone.

But no. Just as I was about to surf for some por..... er, Internet, my Brother knocked to deliver my share of the pizza. After thanking him and continued onwards to Playbo.....er, Internet, my Mom came in and shoved me a cup of Ice Cold Coca Cola. You would think I would be very pissed off by now and lock the door, right? I am so sick, I can't even push the lock without injuring more parts of my body. I mean, I just don't understand how hard it is to lock a door with the ball of a foot while holding the pizza and the cup of Coke.

So, here I am, sitting and wheezing, waiting for the third knock (usually come in threes) which never came. Which spoilt my whole evening because to tell you the truth, I am extremely hungry and I do not want to be caught squatting and eating the darn thing like a starved prisoner who has never seen processed food.

Argh. To heck with it. nyam... nyam... nyam...

Canadian Pizza 2for1. Much better than Pizza Hut.
Trust me. Oh, I just love their small packs of chilies.

Earthing in the rain

If you think that we have nothing better to do on a Saturday, you're wrong. We have tons to do as the business is sort of picks itself up at one moment and also, falling flat on moodier days. Instead of transferring my vast knowledge to my tech, I had to oversee an Earthing project where the customer is complaining about their punctuality.

Right away, I can see there the fault lies as the tech had to go to PJ to purchase the raw material and use the van to fetch it all the way to Shah Alam. And he had to do this before 11 in the morning. Which is not possible because no one had taken into account the delay caused by the supplier since he had to place the order and get them from a nearby manufacturer....

The first thing that needs to be done is to create
a hole for the Earth Chamber (concrete box
on the right). This means opening up all the
bricks and digging a trench for a pipe.

All these bricks, although heavy, are easy
to remove. Just that you have to make
sure there is space for you to put your
finger/screwdriver in to loosen it up.

There. All done! The next task is to dig the hole
deep enough for the Earth chamber to go in.

Unfortunately, it started to rain and after
a few moments, we had to stop work.

When the rain stopped, we quickly dug the hole
as fast as we could....

Before the rain continued...

And spoilt our work

And it got heavier and heavier. We could do
nothing else but to sit back and wait the rain
out. Yes, its very depressing while the rest
of the Saturday afternoon is "wasted".

But we can't complain as there is a job to
be done and I know my techs well, they
will get it done no matter what.

Our work schedule was pushed further back when
we discovered some cables underneath. This
means we have to dig a little to the left now.

So we dug, and test fit and then dug again
to make sure the Earth chamber is sitting
nicely among the tiles and does not sink.

At the same time, we got the trench dug and
the plastic pipe put into place. And then it
rained again...

Its getting to be kind of really depressing to
watch our work being flooded because its not
a nice feeling to scooping the water out. Its
like an eternity doing it as the water just keep
coming back in (all the water from the tiles
just keep coming into this hole).

Much much later, after we've covered the tiles,
we continue to hammer the copper rod into the
Earth Chamber. This time, we did not remove
all the water as the soft earth makes the rod
enter the earth easier. There and then, my
tech admitted he gets sick easily when his
head is "hit' by rain water. I did not say
much but he found his own solution.

Once that is done, we need to scoop out the
excess water since its not receding much.

This is because we need to connect the cables
to the copper rod and the connector is deep
inside the chamber.

Once that is done, we cleaned up and closed
the chamber with loose sand and soil as its
not a good time to use the cement since the
rain will continue again.

And so we cleaned everything up while some
of us tested the Earthing. From my meter, I
got roughly 100 Ohms, which is still too high.
The ideal is under 10 Ohms or better, 5 Ohms.
All this in under slightly three hours......

The con game

My tech collected four phones for repair from one customer. He was testing them again and again but without much progress. I took a look at the phones and discovered that there is something definitely wrong. And for Toshiba phones of this type, it seldom breaks down. Ever.

These are the more "updated" phones but compared
to the lastest models, they are still old.

The reason why its not working? The transformer is
missing and after I replaced it with a closer spec, it
is still not working.

So, I told my Boss about it and after some telephone calls to the customer, it seemed that these phones were given to an unnamed technician for repair quite some time ago. Maybe because of some dispute, the phones were returned back sans the transformers. Boss speculated that the technician could have held on to the transformers to make sure the phones are still not working until the customer agrees to his conditions or something like that. My theory is that, the tech botched the repair job as some ICs were not soldered "professionally" and so, used the phones as cann (cannibalised) parts.

The only working phone was the one not sent to the technician which I easily repaired (faulty speaker, ma). As I have said again, these Toshiba Digital phones do not spoil easy except for normal wear and tear. The only time it breaks down is when someome tampers with it or, in a rare instance, it experienced sudden power surge.