29 January 2008

My own personal Chalk River

Here at the Halls we're having a bit of an infrastructure problem.

Like a lot of our neighbours, we heat with wood, but the Halls have been built so tightly, we need a constant supply of fresh air to keep the fire going... and to carry away any by-products of combustion that might escape the stove.

Unfortunately, last week... we found out about a recall on a part for our air-exchanger. After contacting the manufacturer we were told that they were sending us a replacement part, but that we had to shut down the air exchanger until it arrived. The company talked about “overheating”, but I suppose what they really meant... was that our house could burn down.

So the options here are... shutting down the unit and go without heating... which means heading for a hotel until the part arrives... or continuing to use the unit until the part arrives at the end of the week.

Now given that the unit has been operating flawlessly since it was installed in 1995... I did a little calculation.

I figure the odds of the unit bursting into flames and burning down the house... before we get our part at the end of the week... is somewhere between Stephane Dion finding his missing courage and Elizabeth May becoming Prime Minister of Canada.

So anyway... I've made an executive decision here. And unless this blog suddenly goes suddenly goes silent in the next couple of days... you'll know that it was the right choice.

That sounds so familiar.

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RELATED: Of course, this is execu-speak for...

"She has her head up her ass."
"We nuclear engineers, we like belts and braces, and then we keep our hands in our pockets," he said, referring to the overlapping safety systems.

"She's saying that if we take our hands out of our pockets, our pants will fall down, even though we've got belts and braces."
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