It escapes me where the term "MICRO-ADJUST"--in a heavily ironic sense--came from. Did I make it up, or get it from someone else?
Trust me, MICRO-ADJUST is a brilliantly simple idea that captures the spirit of the aha moment when you get something to work in an act of Luddite punishment of the machine. Say you've put a DVD in an external drive connected to your laptop. Nothing happens. Pure frustration. Why would you curl up with the external drive documentation to find a reason?
No, time to MICRO-ADJUST. You thump on the drive casing with your fingers. Something might happen. If not, you finger-thump in different parts of the casing. More often than not, things will start clicking with the DVD drive and your disk will be read and recognized. This is a successful MICRO-ADJUSTMENT.
The virtues of the MICRO-ADJUSTMENT are it often works, plus you feel better about your frustration, giving the inanimate object a whack. If you break it, so what? You won't be vexed by that again.
A few weeks after my run-around with electricians, which I wrote about here, I was ready to boil when I went into the garage and the overhead fluorescent lights--two four-foot tubes mounted on a ten-foot high ceiling--did not come on. First of all, I don't have the right ladder to safely swap out the pair of tubes. Second, these fluorescents are disposal problems, don't go in the trash. Third, fluorescents have "ballasts" that sometimes go bad. It added up to a job for professional electricians.
I was at wit's end, facing a house call that would cost $400+. I felt cornered.
Then I looked up at the medal shroud holding the fluorescent tube pair. What is this? The fluorescents were mounted to the ceiling cockeyed. Now I was beside myself. Not only did I have to hire a professional because I was unable to safely swap out the lights, I was dealing with another example of apparent stoner craftsmanship that went into construction of my townhouse.
Did I have much to lose?!
I got the longest pole around (used for tree trimming), and was ready for a MICRO-ADJUSTMENT.
I gave that metal shroud a few whacks, bringing it into alignment with the sides of the garage. If nothing else, I was not going to suffer the indignity of bad geomancy from misaligned, dead fluorescents overhead.
Then the most joyous thing happened.
The fluorescents fired up, glowing out in illuminated splendor.
They haven't stopped working.
I didn't call any electricians.
Yet another reason to believe in MICRO-ADJUSTMENTS!
Image credit: clipart.library.com
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