I just replaced the electric socket in my office that's been busted and unusable since we moved in. AND, I replaced the dimmer switch that I busted yesterday will an ill-aimed swat at the knobby thingy on the wall. AND I managed to do it all with out shocking the living daylights out of myself. Eff yeah.

I figured if I was gonna run the risk of electrocuting myself, I might as well try to fix them both. So far, the outlet powers a lamp (which puts it on par with a potato I had in 5th grade science class once) and the dimmer makes the light go up and down. So that's pretty sweet.

The only dicey part was the light switch had no ground wire. According to the internets, old places sometimes don't have ground wires so they're not entirely necessary. So it's not grounded. I just taped the lead from the ground wire over with electrical tape. If that was a terrible idea, please let me know cause the smoke alarm is busted too, and if we have a fire, we won't know about it until way too late. Jeff said it was ok, and he's an architect AND owns a book called "Home Depot Electronics 1-2-3"... so at least we've got that going for us. (And if you know what to do with a smoke alarm that yells "LOW BATTERY" every 30 seconds despite the third set of new batteries you just slapped into it, I'm open to suggestions.)

In the meantime, I'll be adding "electrician" to my resume. Awesome.