Let There Be Light!

Last night I noticed the pool light wasn't on (the one that is actually in the pool). I have it on a timer to come on automatically from 7 PM to 10 PM. It makes for a nice look out there. Anyway, after checking the GFI, it was obvious the bulb was burned out. Now how in the world do you change a light bulb underwater? (That sounds like one of those, "How many pool owners does it take to change a light bulb" joke...). So I googled it and found a nice site with step by step directions and pictures. Turns out, the light is sealed in a funnel shaped 'can' with long power cord out of the back. Unscrew the retaining screw, and the whole sealed can floats to the surface. The cord is long enough to pull the can out of the water and up onto the edge of the pool for replacement. Which is a simple task of loosening a clamp, and unscrewing the bulb (looks like a flood light). Except this bulb burns wicked hot and is meant to be lit underwater only. Our local pool place is open today (Labor Day) and they had the bulb I needed ($30!). So I ran down there, bought that, and put everything back together. By the way, I was doing all of this laying on the pool deck and never did have to get in the pool. So I got it all back together and put back in the pool. Flicked on the circuit breaker, re-set the GFI, and it lit up! The ultimate test was to be sure that there was no short with electricity in the pool so I dunked the beagle. She survived. (Kidding!)

The next problem we are having is with the kids' laptop - the very one I just replaced the screen on. Now I am getting disk errors. The strange thing is that the hard drive passes all sorts of diagnostic tests, as does the RAM and other tests. It is sort of a random thing. I have the entire drive 'Ghosted" so if it fails completely, I have all the data. I cannot stand the inconsistency of the occurrences. So I have swapped the hard drives between the kids' and Lucie's computer to see if it is a drive problem, or a computer problem. Hopefully, the problem goes away entirely but I hope it is a hard drive issue - that is much cheaper and easier to replace.

We had a good weekend. Pretty quiet. Watched some movies and mostly hung out. Today we are going over to a friend's house for a cookout.