electricity.
© 1996 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>

My last apartment did not have an electrical system which one would (even liberally) describe as ``up to code.''

For example, if I ran my microwave at the same time that my upstairs neighbors were drying their clothes, the whole house would shut off. Trying to coordinate these sorts of activities was something of a pain, especially since the house had fuses rather than circuit breakers, and since the power went off so regularly, we often ran out of fuses at inopportune times.

Another really convenient thing was that the fuse box was actually outside the house, directly outside my kitchen window, on a precarious hillside that was nigh-on inaccessible if the next-door neighbors had locked their gate (which they usually did.) Getting to it involved either crawling through the briars underneath the deck, or crawling out the window and dropping down.

This latter was especially scary, as the only way to get out the window involved standing on the sink. And the sink wasn't very well supported: it was merely glued to the wall, and weakly held up by the water pipes.

And the sink had no water cut-offs at all. So should the pipes bend from having people stand on it so frequently, we would have to figure out how to shut off the water for the entire house...

Finally, our landlord agreed to do something about the power problem, and sent out some electricians to look at it. The response of these electricians was, basically, ``this house is so far out of code we're not even allowed to touch it.'' This was followed by a laundry list of required items including replacing all of the wiring.

When this message was passed on to my landlord, her response was, ``oh, they all say that, they're just a bunch of crooks.''

Yet there we were, sitting in the dark a lot of the time.

Finally she took additional action, which was to send out her Idiot Son to replace the fuse box. It's not clear what electrician-oriented training the Landord's Idiot Son had, beyond the fact that he owned a truck, but we were still young and naive about this whole tenant-landlord thing.

Things then went from bad to worse, for while we now had circuit breakers instead of fuses, we were also having power failures far more frequently. It seemed that a microwave alone would trip the circuit breakers if it was on for more than thirty seconds.

(And remember that the whole house would go dark -- although there were several circuit breakers in the box, and some of them even seemed to be attached, there was only one that really mattered, for that was the one that the entire house was routed through.)

So, after a week or two of complaining, the Landlord's Idiot Son returned. His solution to the fact that the power kept going out? Put in higher rated circuit breakers until the problem went away! Boy, that made us feel really safe. But what were we to do? Eventually he got up to 30 or 35 amps, and the power would stay on. Though the lights would dim if you even looked at them funny.

Once, years later, another set of electricians was over having a good laugh at the deathtrap I called home; one asked the other, ``where does this one go?'' I offered, ``I think that one probably goes back to the hot tub.''

``You have a hot tub?? Oh dear god, tell me you don't use it! Please, if you value your life, stay out of that thing!''

The hot tub, of course, would periodically stop working with a burnt-out engine or something. The neighbors would periodically get it fixed; I had long since given up on it, since they also never did their share of cleaning it.

One day I was working from home, when the power went out. Then came back on again a second later. Then went out again. I leaned out the kitchen window and what did I find but a fratboy flipping circuit breakers willy-nilly. ``Stop that,'' I suggested. ``Uh, the hot tub doesn't work,'' he countered. Oh, well that's ok then. My disk probably won't be that corrupted.

Since the power for the house was all routed through one switch, it follows that there was only one service, and thus, one bill. The service would be registered in one tenant's name, and the others would chip in their share each month, or so the theory went.

Well, after a while, the service found its way into my name. And each month, the bill would arrive, and I'd write out a check for my share, and slide it under my neighbors' door so that they could contribute their portion and mail it.

It's not clear whether they ever sent in the bill, because I kept getting progressively more threatening letters from the utility company, and the amount owed kept going up. My neighbors were largely unavailable for comment, or when they were, it was so-and-so's responsibility, and he's not home right now.

Great. My credit rating was losing hit-points, and the fratboy law students upstairs were singularly uninterested in solving the problem.

After about six months, and several nasty letters, I finally got them to act. I had to go as far as threatening to have the service canceled and going to stay with a friend until they got the service transferred into their name instead of mine; since I had demonstrated my ability to pay the bill and they hadn't, I reasoned, they should be the ones negotiating with creditors, not me.

Finally they did, and the bills got paid. For a while.

Eventually a new nest of fratboy law students moved in (it was never clear exactly when the changing of the guard occurred; I think that they were all friends-of-friends. Once you get fratboy law students, it seems, you can never get rid of them. They're like roaches.)

So this next batch would occasionally ask me for my share of the bill, but then eventually they stopped. I didn't notice for a long time; since the bill was no longer in my name, it wasn't a big concern to me any more. Every now and then it would occur to me that I hadn't been being asked for my share, and I would make a mental note to ask them about it, but I never got around to it.

Well then one day I was sitting at my desk working, when I heard someone thrashing through the bushes outside my kitchen window. I climbed up on the sink and opened the window, giving the bedraggled santa-claus-like man I found there a good scare.

``Hi there,'' I said. ``What are you doing?''

``I'm turning off the power.''

``Please don't.''

``But you haven't paid your bill for over a year.''

``I see. Well, can you give me a minute to turn off my computer?''

``Ok.''

So he turned off the power, and I went upstairs and vented at the first fratboy I could find. It was, as expected, ``not his fault.'' Well, two or three days later, they finally got the power turned back on, and finally asked me for my share of the electric bill for the previous year.

About a month later, I was working away, madly hacking on software that you're probably using right now, when my network connection went down. This put a bit of a crimp in my style, and I called up the network gurus at Netscape HQ. From all appearances, their connection to the phone company was fine, and my computer and hardware was fine, but my link to the phone company was catatonic. So we placed a call to PacBell, and I worked as best I could without a network for the rest of the day and evening.

The next day, I wasn't back on line, so I was going to drive down to the office to work. Well what should I see, as I walked upstairs, but our telephone junction box sitting open, with dozens of colorful wires pointing in all manner of (disconnected) directions. And plugged into one of the test-points is a phone extension cable, going up the stairs, and snaking its way under my neighbors' kitchen door.

So after beating my head against the wall until I saw stars, I knocked on their front door. The same idiot who had been playing circuit-breaker-bingo answered.

``Hi'', I said. ``What's up with the phones?''

``Oh, I was trying to put in a new phone for someone who's moving in soon. Is something wrong?''

``Just that you killed my network, and I've hardly been able to get any work done, and I have a deadline in two days. And also I've been wasting the time of a bunch of other people who you don't know. Besides that, no, everything's just peachy.''

``Well, nothing was labeled, so I... so I...''

``Did it occur to you to ask me?''

``Uh...''

``Ok, nevermind.'' Deep breath. ``Can you just put it back like it was before please?''

``Well, I'm not sure if I can. And I'm moving out tomorrow.''

[ Primal scream, followed by me stomping off to my car and squealing out. ]

I moved about two months later. And there was much rejoicing.