Tag Doors

When A Door Closes

Michael 3 Comments

This past weekend I was getting out of the car when I realized car doors don’t close right, the kind of light bulbs that last ten years don’t last ten years, and computers ask questions they have no intention of doing anything with about. I also realized these are all first world problems but, well frankly, those are the kinds of problem I most encounter.

Let’s look at those cars doors. Every other door in the (first) world either opens or closes. Most exterior and interior house doors have latches or knobs and you push them open and they stay open or fasten them closed and then stay closed. Some even have pneumatic or motorized closers that close them for you, and thus a name that has nothing to do with baseball. Refrigerator doors have those magnetic strips that run the complete inner rim of the door with the expressed purpose of making certain the door, when not opened, is indeed closed. An entire industry has been created around the process of opening and closing garage doors. The point is that most all doors in most all buildings are mostly always open or always closed unless you take steps to leave them partially opened (or, for the half empty types, partially closed).

Car doors are a different breed. Yes car doors have a latching mechanism that ensures the door remains in the closed position until you take steps to open it (a perfectly reasonable expectation of a car door when travelling down the highway at 15 miles over the posted speed limit), but only the car door has taken pains to provide the user with a position not open yet not quite closed (and a quite unreasonable position on that same highway). So often are these doors in this position that car manufacturers have taken steps to alert the driver that a door is not completely closed by means of a warning light on the dash panel. Would it not be a more reasonable resolution to take steps to make a door that closes completely? Perhaps the car makers should get together with the refrigerator makers.

Now, speaking of lights, I have this pole lamp in the corner of my living that has graced the corner of this living room, the previous living room, a family room, and a room that once had aspirations of being a den but became a nursery instead. As you can see, it’s a versatile and, at least in my opinion, an attractive light. I bought it about 15 years ago. I almost didn’t buy it. It was pricey for the time and for its type and that, I was told, was due to the light’s lamp. Lamp’s light? It has (had) a most usual bulb that looks like a miniature fluorescent tube that had the added bonus of a built in dimming mechanism. I questioned this arrangement, not to mention the price, before making the purchase. I was assured that the dimmer worked as well in the home as in the showroom, that indeed it was expensive and when it comes time to replace the bulb it too will be expensive, but that its bulb would last at least 10 years if not longer.

Well indeed it was expensive but it worked as advertised and its bulb lasted more than the claimed 10 years. I use the past tense here because after those ten and half again more years the bulb has given its all. I never found out if the replacement bulb is expensive because when I went to buy said replacement bulb I was told that “they haven’t made those for at least ten years now, but, who knows, maybe you can find something on the Internet.”

So to home I went, in my car with the now fully closed doors, fired up the old desktop computer and thought I’d check my email before beginning my what would probably be fruitless search for a miniature, dimmable, fluorescent light bulb. A message from my doctor’s hospital organization was there telling me I had a message on their server. (If they can send me a message that says I have a message why can’t they just send me the message? That may be Thursday’s post.) So I signed on to their server with my user name and super secret password and was immediately presented with a pop up window asking me if I want my browser to remember my super secret password. I suppose so I was not confused by this question I was presented with multiple choice answers. — Yes — Not Now — Never —  And as I do every time I am asked that same question entering that same site I select “Never.”

And then I wonder…we can’t even make doors that close all the way and I expect a computer to understand the concept of never.

 

Desperately Seeking Closure

Michael 1 Comment

Did you draw your mother’s ire when as a kid you left (or if you still are a kid, leave) the door open when you came in from outside? Or let the refrigerator hang open? Or had an array of dresser draws intrude into your room, socks spilling onto the floor? Well, I didn’t. Not back then. Oh, I wasn’t perfect either. I probably had a door stay open to the elements on an urgent run from outdoor playing when all the trees were taken. (What can I say? The rest of the neighborhood kids weren’t perfect either.) But now I’ve turned into a man with seemingly not enough strength to get a cupboard door closed all the way.

If you were to look into my kitchen after I cooked up a good healthy breakfast you would find the refrigerator closed but not quite completely, the silverware drawer open, the cabinet where the oatmeal resides with its lid half-cocked not shut quite all the way, and the dishwasher where the used plates and tableware have been carefully placed quite uncarefully left ajar. Certainly the cabinets where the plates and glasses are stored would be similarly left agape except that those items are stored in racks on the counter. There are even times when the under-sink cabinet chemicals remain unshielded when I take the time to wipe down the counter after enjoying my healthy if a bit harried morning meal.Door

This carelessness isn’t restricted to the kitchen. In the bathroom drawers and doors are more likely to be open than closed upon entering. (I am good about lowering the toilet seat. Years of living in predominantly female households will do that.) In the bedroom the dresser drawers are almost always opened just a crack. Somehow even the roll top on the desk that now qualifies as my longest lasting relationship never quite makes it all the way to the writing surface, even with gravity helping along my now apparently feeble shutting action. The front door manages to get closed but on a nice day with the patio in use that door stands as great a chance of being as open during the night as it was during the day since I’ll often go to bed and simply forget there is a door there. (Note to potential local burglars, there’s nothing behind that unlatched entrance worth taking except perhaps the aforementioned rolltop desk which is much too heavy for one person to handle. Especially if that one person has a strong desire to maintain a certain level of stealth. And baby making ability.)

This failure to get doors, drawers, and other front pieces into their fully secure positions can’t be age related, can it? Certainly it’s not because I forget to secure the offending openings, patio access notwithstanding. I’d not think it’s a strength issue since I seem to do well enough with car doors which are certainly heavier than veneered particle board cabinet doors. I’d say perhaps it’s a laziness thing but does it really take any more effort to push a drawer that last quarter inch than not? Could it be that I’ve developed this propensity to leaving things standing open sometime after adolescence and just had a sufficiently active adulthood that I didn’t notice I was leaving doors and drawers open until recently now that I have more time to hang around the not closed openings? That seems doubtful in that you would imagine at some time I would walk into a hanging drawer front or notice the milk had soured from a refrigerator left open for an entire week’s worth of work days. No, age doesn’t seem to be a factor here other than one of coincidence.

I think the culprits are the house fairies that I had been hoping would have shown up during those years of weeks’ worth of work days to do things like clean the counters and match the socks tossed haphazardly into the dresser. They finally got around to me on their list of houses to work on and when they got here found that everything they had been dispatched to do is now being dealt with. Since house fairies are notoriously reticent to leave a place once they have been assigned, they are obviously looking for something to do, cook, eat, write, or wash, and they leave the room within which they are so searching somewhat hastily upon my entrance. The doors and drawers are left open just a smidge because, let’s be blunt about it, fairies don’t take up that much space and can get in and out of places through just a crack. That clearly explains the cabinets and dressers and even the desk doors and drawers that seem to never make it completely closed.

There. I feel better about it already. All except for that patio door business. I think I might have to take the blame for that one.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?