While I am not a credentialled electrician, I have been playing with electricity since I was a young lad, and have installed breakers, wired stoves, and even mastered the four-way switch. I have also electrocuted myself on at least a dozen occasions — one time waking up across the room from the clothes dryer.

Just yesterday, I rewired a couple of sockets in the living room after a 70s-era loose connection took out half of the circuit.

Therefore, it is with no little authority that I proclaim the following hard-earned lessons.

• An electrician’s job is one part welding (whoops, forgot to open the breaker) and two parts nicking fingers on sharp metal edges.
• Don’t twist the wires together before screwing on the wire nut.
• Plastic electrical boxes with friction Romex stops are crap.
• Electrical tape conceals all sins and binds all wounds.
• Blacken the neutral wire leading back to the switch so that the next electrician will know that it’s “hot.”
• Lamp cord has ridges on the insulation marking the neutral conductor.
• Think twice before licking those terminals.
• Leave no less than 6″ of Romex sticking out of each junction box.
• Always use screw terminals instead of friction-fit wire clamps.
• It takes an average of four different screwdrivers to install a simple outlet.

To usher in the Christmas season, I took a swig of egg nog last night, only to notice that the expiry date printed on the carton was “10-01-09.” Assuming this was Canadian nog, that means it expired on the 10th of January, 2009, and I should probably head on down to the hospital for the stomach suck special right frickin’ now. But if it was of American provenance, then it went bad on or about October 1st, 2009, and I should merely plan to spend my day within range of the commode. However, if this was old-country nog from Europe, then I can safely continue nogging it up until the 9th of January in the new year. (Unless the 10 actually refers to 1910 and I have in my possession a very rare and valuable nog — and am also dead before arrival.)

This is a very bad decade for date formats, and the next won’t be much better. How much cumulative brainpower will be wasted attempting to parse inscrutable noggy dates? I’m nearly to the point of patronizing only those establishments that issue receipts using the “17-DEC-09,” or “2009-12-17,” or even “Thursday, December 17, 2009″ formats. Few do.

But if I can just make it to January 13th, 2032, the ambiguity of dates will finally cease, if only for a few weeks. For, on that date, and no earlier, all formats will be clear:

• 13-01-32 (Canadian)
• 01-13-32 (American)
• 32-01-13 (ISO European)
• 13-32-01 (Mystic Order of Nog)

Assuming Arabic numerals, the twelve Gregorian months, and a Common Era that commences approximately with the birth of an influential east Mediterranean prophet, then there can be no confusion: the year must be 32, or 2032, and once that is chosen, the day of the month must be the 13th, leaving only the month, 1, or January. Ta da!

I should be just shy of retirement on that glorious day — assuming that Extra Foods does import its nog from overseas — and still competent enough to enjoy the rush of unequivocalness.

Update

Okay, well I suppose the earlier January 31st, 2031, is also unambiguous, since you wouldn’t need to know which 31 was the year and which was the day of the month.

(If I’m ever to become a better writer, I’m going to have to abandon this fascination with alliteration. Oops.)

Thursday’s addendum to our ongoing saga of multiple power outages fried my stereo receiver: a wayward bird was able to take down practically the entire city’s electrical supply. At first, the pre-blackout spike seemed to reprogram the AM tuner so that it couldn’t pick up the standard frequencies: instead of tuning to 560, 570, and 580 kHz, it insisted on stopping on 556, 573, and 584 kHz. That made CBC Radio One Whitehorse a little more fuzzy than usual. After cycling the power, the radio recalled its traditional decimal tuning points, but the signal is now so distorted that it’s unlistenable. The CD player’s audio output is still fine though, so the damage seems to have been restricted to the radio component.

A similar outage from last year — caused by an inquisitive squirrel as I recall — incapacitated one of my surge protectors.

The icy 2006 blackout burned out another protector and also boat-anchored a computer.

Thankfully, my many surge protectors are often willing to sacrifice themselves for Yukon Electrical/Energy‘s habitual failings, except, apparently, when the protectors determine that they’re actually more expensive than the devices they “protect.” I guess that’s a good thing.

Yet at some point, one of these spikes is going to blow something truly expensive, perhaps on the premises of a local business: Boston Pizza suffered a host of outage-caused damages earlier this year. I’m sure that there’s some six-point type somewhere that indemnifies the utilities from my piddling damages, but a big enough circuit blast might inspire litigation from a larger upset customer. It’s not as though these two utilities can claim years of steady and uninterrupted supply and distribution in their defence.