I re-learned another lesson this evening. However, before I describe
it, I must provide some background information regarding the issue.
Also, some of my audience may not be interested in a seemingly
non-computer related story, but I will associate it into
computer-related thoughts by the end of it.
About 4 months ago my wife, my kids and I moved into a single family
dwelling for the first time in my married life of 5 years. We live in
the bay area, so this is no small feat given that my wife is a brave
stay-at-home mother of 2 little boys and a bigger, (and questionably)
grown-up boy. Regardless, we came into the house knowing only a little
bit about caring for a house, especially a 45 year-old house. The
previous tenant was aging and did not have the stamina to do some of
the larger maintenance tasks like patch walls that cracked from 15 or
20 years of clay soil ground movement, or replace aging kitchen
cabinets, or any number of other, smaller tasks.
Now, my father (thankfully) knows quite a bit about painting and
woodworking. He also knows a good hardware store that has intelligent
and knowledgeable people employed there. So, I was able to get all of
the major cracks in the wall patched up (until the next ones come along
in a couple of years 
). I was also able to get the walls repainted.
I even installed a ceiling fan. With the help of my father, my wife, my
brother-in-law and my brothers, we even tore out most of the kitchen
and updated it with new cabinets and appliances. I installed a garbage
disposal, all by myself. I thought that was the coolest thing about all
of it.
Hold on… Hold on… I know, I’m being a bit long-winded, but I’m
getting to my point. About 3 weeks ago, my wife came to me during the
middle of the day and said “Honey, the garbage disposal is making funny
noises and isn’t draining normally.” Uh-oh… I went in and checked it
out. It was whirring, but you could tell the blades weren’t spinning.
This being the first time I actually had to troubleshoot a garbage
disposal, guess what I didn’t do… Well, I didn’t stop and find the
instructions. Nor did I call anybody to ask what to do. Instead, I
naively said to myself, “I’ll just turn it off and on a couple of times
to try and get whatever is lodged in there unstuck.” Right… I see you
nodding and laughing to yourselves… You know what happens. It just
stops making any noises or showing any signs of operation at all.
Over the next few days, I talked with some of my family members and
came to the conclusion that I had likely burnt out the motor and that I
should call the manufacturer for warranty repair. I got as far as
getting the serial number off of the disposal and getting the number to
call off of their website. Then I got busy. Then, I procrastinated.
That’s life… The next few days were spent thinking to myself (and
having my wife gently prod me occasionally by saying) “when are you
going to get that disposal fixed?”
This evening, I finally decided I would give troubleshooting another
try as my brother had mentioned twisting the motor manually by means of
an alan wrench (sp?). I did that, and it moved. Slowly at first, then
smoothly. It still did not turn on, however, so I was still a little
frustrated. Then, something stuck out at me as I looked at the bottom
of the disposal… There was a little red button sticking ever so
innocently out of the bottom of the device. “What’s a little red button
doing on the bottom of this stupid thing?” I said to myself… “I
wonder what would happen if I pushed the little red button… Maybe
it’s a reset button… No, that would be too easy…” I actually walked
away to go look up the manual online again to see if it referenced the
little button. But then, I decided I was too lazy and that I was just
going to give it a try.
Well, the little red button did exactly what I thought would have been
“too easy.” Once I pushed it in, I found out it was a little circuit
breaker built into the device. It had been tripped during the original
problems, and that is why the device had completely stopped working.
When I turned the disposal back on after reseting that button, there
was something inside that I could tell was probably a little more
“chunky” than should have been there. After a couple of seconds,
however, it was sufficiently ground up to continue on its way down the
drain pipe and all was back to normal.
So, what does this have to do with computers? Well, I suppose it just
has to do with life experience and the fact that each of us has
different levels of experience in any given area of our lives. Life
works best when people share (and receive) freely of experience and
wisdom from those that have been through it before.
In this case, I assumed that the motor had “burnt out” because I had
never seen a garbage disposal system act up before. Nor had I seen one
with a burnt out motor. Nor had I even bothered to check out all of the
little switches and gadgetry that the garbage disposal offered (I know,
I know… What kind of a techie am I…). So it wasn’t until I decided
to give it a real troubleshooting effort and talk to other people that
had experience in the matters of garbage disposal troubleshooting that
I actually made any progress. I also now recall many similar situations
in my technical career where I would have fixed a problem and gained
experience and knowledge a whole lot faster if I had relied on the help
of other, more knowledgeable experts.
