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Tuesday, June 04, 2024

When technology lets us down


The house AC stopped working Friday night. I was supposed to take my daughter to a comic-con over the weekend. She went; I stayed home.

We got a "small room" window unit to try to keep a couple of rooms comfortable enough for the cats and especially the chinchilla (chinchillas are sensitive to overheating, as you can probably understand). The rest of the house is blocked with a doorway blanket to concentrate the cool air as much as possible.

The cats like to venture into the hot part of the house, fall into a stupor, and nap. I do not.

My weekend largely consisted of trying to manage the temperature in the house and give the chinch cold bricks from the freezer, since the little AC can't really keep up with the heat. 

Coincidentally, my parents' AC went out a week before mine did, so taking the chinch there for coolness isn't an option. (Theirs should be fixed before mine, though.)

I've been OK, if not comfortable. The other household members, who got back Sunday night, are not OK with the situation. They've let me know. Unceasingly and vociferously.

As a consequence, my mood hasn't been great. I'm having trouble writing, and I end up deleting most of what I do write because it ends up sounding grumpy. 

A repairman is coming, and I hope he's able to fix it. Affordably.

Some people think I'm a Luddite, wanting to stick to primitive ways of doing things. They would be mistaken. Where the primitive ways are (in my opinion) just as good or better, I prefer them. When technology is better than doing without, I'm happy to embrace it. 

The only caveat is that I never want to be so dependent on technology that I can't survive (or am stuck in a loop of complaining) without it. I realize how easily it could all go away, so I appreciate it while I have it, but try to make sure it's never necessary to my survival. 

As I've pointed out before, learning to make fire without lighters or matches has caused me to never again be caught without lighters, and to appreciate the inventors who gave us this kind of thing. 

The market did that.

Happy update: It got fixed last night and is now running and cooling the house! For "only" $264. It could have been worse; my parents' repair bill was $1000.

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Thank you for reading.  

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