John carmack throwing shade on lightswitches was not on my bingo card
The hilarity of your home wiring being sassed by the (admittedly amazing) guy whose video games boil down to “kill stuff, hit switches” with escalating difficulty and frustration.
On the one hand, I’d love our paths to cross. On the other, I’d relish the thought that he’d sweat just a little when trying to figure out anything inside my home.
“Oh, I’m sorry. The switch you want is behind a hidden door in the other room. Just tap on every wall until one of them opens.”
In a rental unit id be pissed to see that without labels, but in a private residence its whatever. You learn it quick enough.
I have a set of switches just like these and it unironically took me a year before getting them down. I never tried so hard to memorize them, though.
Where I live, there’s switches next to the front and back door.
I’ve been here since 2017.
I still flip the ones closest to the doors to turn on the porch light because that’s what makes sense, instead of the one further from the door that actually does it.
Lol yea thats about what I meant by quick enough. But did you learn a couple of them sooner? I feel like there are 2 maybe 3 id learn in a few months, but some of those are hallways or outside lights, some shit that, ya, would take me a year.
My favorite is when one of the switches does nothing you can visibly see and you never find out what it’s for.
Had one of those. Eventually figured out that a prior owner had a lamppost in the yard. How did I figure that out? I found the buried romex. Not conduit. Romex.
I’m no electrician and even I know that you don’t bury Romex lmao. Good lord.
Edit: now that I think about it, the previous homeowner of my house used to have a fountain out front that has since been decommissioned… I found the wiring for it in a box under some gravel around where the fountain was.
There is direct burial cabling, so that could have been it. (Not Romex branded, but same thing)
I don’t think they want my European curiosity
It’s beautiful 🥹
It’s just grey colored 3-4 conductor cabling.
I still like putting it in conduit so you don’t have to worry about someone hitting it with a shovel.
You see it under porches and decks with power outlets a lot too.
Huh, TIL.
The yellow sheathed cable can be buried. The cheap white stuff cannot, at least not for long.
No shit, an old house I moved into had about half the lights just hard wired to mains so they were always on. They had the switch runner in the box, but it wasn’t connected when I moved in so the switches did nothing. The previous tenants just screwed and unscrewed the bulbs (I rewired them correctly).
Still to this day I will lay in bed and wonder how in the ever loving fuck this happened, who did it, what they were thinking, if it was intentional, and then come to the terrifying realization that the person or people involved in this are probably still out there somewhere, operating motor vehicles on public roads, putting us all in danger. They probably even think they are smart. I mean they do their own electrical work after all.
Screw haunted houses, this is a real cursed house
What I want to know is what is the science called of placing outlets and switches exactly where furniture goes?
You’ve heard of the Chinese art on Feng Shui? The Chinese art of locating outlets and switches in places that get covered by furniture is called Fook Uho. Every interior designer studies that.
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Good design? Maybe during the Great Depression when a home had one light bulb and one radio.
The majority of those $5 extension cords are generally a fire waiting to happen. They are useful if you plug nothing more than a lamp in to one. Nor should one just leave them lay about on the floor, behind furniture or not.
Source: retired firefighter that has been to more than one electrical caused house fire as 2am.
I just use speaker cable and skin the ends with my teeth and jam the ends in the outlet.
We’ve all been there haven’t we.
I bought my house two years ago and it had been retrofitted with baseboard radiators. They covered up the lower receptacles in every outlet so you could only get a plug into the top one and then the wire ran over a hot radiator. Just mind-boggling that anybody could do that and not see a problem with it. Granted, the outlets were embedded in the cinderblock walls so it wasn’t an easy matter to move them up, but laziness kills.
For good measure, these plugs were not grounded and they all had the polarity reversed.
Oooo! The Landlord’s cousin special!
What the actual fuck lmao.
Till some guy in Germany calls you and tells you to cut it out.
Merry Christmas and a Happy 1985.
My brother lives in an apartment with one of those. We only found out it’s supposed to go to a ceiling light when I moved into the same complex, and my place had the same switch
There’s always one that needs to be turned on for any of the other switches to function, too.
Who the fuck does electrical wiring around you guys’ parts?
Americans
Uh … Have you seen the crews that build houses?
Lowest bidder Americans.
I got a home this year I had one like that, the wiring was wrongly attached to an outlet that didn’t have the tab broken. Took while to figure out.
Might be exterior lights that also have motion sensors so you never realize you turned them on.
or switched outlets that were converted back to unswitched
or fan/light switches but no light kit was installed with the fan
That first one might actually be it. There’s an old motion light on that side of the house that I still need to change out. Good call.
or fan/light switches but no light kit was installed with the fan
Or no fan was installed with the light.
I was going to get smug about how I was diligent enough to blank off the switch when I removed my garbage disposal, but then I remembered I have switches that do nothing in my fanless bedrooms.
I use a bunch of sabbath covers for switches that either do nothing or shouldn’t typically be switched. Easier than installing blanks.
The real issue with this picture is not the “user experience”, unless it is a hotel or some public place where customers are intended to interact with the devices.
The real issue is that the switches and plates aren’t lined up right.
the switches and plates aren’t lined up right
If that bugs you, don’t look at those screws. So close to perfectly lined up, but not quite.
There’s a light-switch in my flat that has a red light in the fitting that illuminates when you switch it on. It doesn’t turn on any light in the place. I have no idea what is for. As a Steven Wright fan, I flick it on and off occasionally hoping I get a call from some woman in Germany saying “cut it out.”
Edit: after posting this I saw someone else had made the same joke, but fuck it, I’m leaving it up. Who knew there were other fans of a thirty year old album here?
It’s the switch for the red light, of course. Installed by the previous tenant, named Roxanne.
She didn’t have to put on the red light.
Many rooms in my place have light switches tied to outlets. Usually just a single switched plug per room. I know where they all are now but it would have been good if there was a little light icon on each plug.
Still, now that I know, I’m not sure I actually want to add that icon, since I know where it is and I’ll either plug in a light (in which case I know easily) or I won’t (in which case I don’t care).
Some electricians install the receptacles upside-down if they’re switched.
I hate that. I would flip them around the first time I encountered that. There are many things that can be done, from switch covers to lighted/unlighted/colored switches next to each other. All better and more foolproof options
Maybe a porch or outside light.
Nope. I know where the switch for that is.
My bet is that it is for some appliance you can’t hear or see turning on. Possibly a power outlet in a weird place for permenantly installed appliances
I leave it turned off and it doesn’t seem to affect anything, and I’m in a small 1 bedroom flat without any appliances that it might connect to. It really is a mystery.
Possibly for the kitchen, like a light tgat ypu could mount under the cupoards or for a vent
Nope. It’s nowhere near the kitchen, and my place isn’t that sophisticated. It’s in the living room in the same vicinity as the switches for that and two lights in the garage. I thought it might be for something in the garage, but I haven’t found anything that it affects in there.
I’m starting to enjoy this guessing game we’ve got going.
That was my guess because the flat I live in (80s East German) has one just like that.
Living room could mean that there was the idea of a light for a dining table. Otherwise a power socket outside, on the terrace for example or an outside light? Garage door opener maybe?
If you really want to find out, I think you’ll need to “play” around with your safety box and that particular switch
That’s just a typical videogame puzzle: figure the correct combination to open the door, or turn on the correct lights
I wanted to make a joke about doom just being a shooter, using his “video game stories are like porn” quote, but honestly the originals are pretty damn puzzley
My open plan living room, kitchen, sunroom area has a bank of 5 on one wall, 3 on the other.
I’m the only person who knows what all the switches do from memory.
My wife and kids throw a lightswitch rave every time they want to turn the lights on over the island and i just beatbox techno while they try to figure it out.
Mine just turn everything on. Outside lights have been on for a week because they just flail at the switches then leave the room.
My house has motion-activated floodlights with the switches inside the garage. It almost qualifies as a workout trying to figure out if they’re on or not.
I mean, it’s your house and not a product you’re selling. After a couple weeks you likely know which switch does what. Whenever a host comes you can show them the switches.
I will never be not mad at the latency digital electronics add. It’s so small and imperceptible, but it feels like an eon.
I bet the kids never even notice.I get disproportionately angry when “pause” doesn’t pause for like 3 seconds.
EDIT: Was talking about bluetooth headphones, but the stuff y’all listed is infuriating too.
I click pause, nothing happens, I click pause again, the video stops and starts.
Fuckers.
I swear just reading this spiked my blood pressure
hits spacebar to pause
Website scrolls
Laptop goes flying out the window
INTENSE RAGE
I have a mouse with a scroll wheel. I just can’t comprehend why half the time the website scrolls in the opposite direction from what it’s supposed to do if I flick the wheel too quickly.
I hate the credit card terminals at TJ Maxx/Marshalls specifically because of this. They have noise and visual feedback when you tap but it’s always a few seconds late. As a programmer, that shit makes me want to track down whoever wrote it and slap them.
Is is disproportionately low? Because there is no upper limit to the rage from pause not being instant.
The pause plus all the streaming services adding shit over the image really pisses me off when I stopped it to read the letter the character is holding and I can’t tell what it is because stopping at the right time took four attempts and then it has some shaded gradient over the screen.
Yeah, when one click is interpreted as “show the UI”, but the step back when you miss some frames you want to look closer at is longer than the time it takes to hide the UI from no activity. And then you do pause it at the right time finally and the fucking video player goes, “oh you paused it, time for me to display other shit in front of the background jokes you’re trying to read or the frames of nice butt you’re trying to appreciate”.
Shit like that is why I’ve been quitting certain streaming apps.
If you can notice it, it’s not imperceptible.
If only we had a word for that, right? Unimperceptible, maybe?
I guess LED lights have some latency but to me it’s still better than some of those fluorescent lights. I’ve had those where the bulb doesn’t light until I’ve already given up and turned on another light.
It’s very perceptible to people who know how it should be. I remember when CFL’s were being pushed, and they had to “warm up”. Then we got LED bulbs that have 500-1500ms latency from cold to lit. We deserve better.
Pretty sure its the integrated drivers that cause the delay with LEDs lighting up. Better than the case 5-10 years ago though, where we still needed external drivers to make them work - now you just run your line voltage straight to the sockets. Much easier on the electricians.
That is a crappy switch placement, though. A little more planning would’ve fixed that. Nothing stopping you from getting a label maker though.
And it’s often on purpose because the driver is smoothing out the mains input and/or supports dimmers. A tiny delay is worth it to have an LED that doesn’t flicker
You really don’t want a bargain bin LED where the driver is just a half bridge rectifier and a resistor in series with the LED
And it’s better than the old crappy energy-saving bulbs that emitted pure darkness for a minute when you turned them on.
Yeah i dont miss CFLs
I have two identical light switches in the kitchen right next to eachother but one does the garbage disposal it is so fucking annoying.
That reminds me of Macs circa 1990. The disk drive had no eject button (because of course it was perfectly intuitive to drag the disk icon onto the fucking trash can icon to eject) but the computer’s power button was helpfully located right above the disk drive, so I was constantly powering off my computer whenever I just wanted to eject a disk.
My university had a bay of Macs in the IT suite with laminated cards taped over the power button to warn newbies of this.
If the switches don’t match I’m triggered. Some small label or abbreviation on the plate might be ok though.
Or little icons that match the style of the plate would be cool. I’m thinking about getting these for the ceiling fans:
Factories have safety lockouts for that sort of thing and I’m dismayed that they’re not a thing in the home. Especially for when your hand is down there.
There are a couple of ways to fix that problem.
You can just get a switch blocker, this prevents you accidentally operating a switch. Yet still allows you to operate by leaving access behind the guard. All the while also giving you a visual indication.
Or you can use two different switches in the box. One could be a different color, or it might be lighted next to an unlighted switch, or a different type of toggle.
You can get a guard that makes the switch hard to flick.
You could also just buy a different light switch in a different color (Like Black)
You could also block it off entirely and setup an air switch so the on switch is in your sink. It’s safer that way.
All 3 are in the realm of DIY
Just wait until he discovers how some people configure smart switches.
One press turns the lights on. A long press turns them on dimly. Two presses turns the lights on in the staircase. Three presses…
If you don’t have Bluetooth you can access them via morse code.
BCD
The first two are good. I love hold-to-dim. But a switch should only control one thing.
When I bought my house, one of the lights was a dumb switch, but smart bulb. Normally, it works like a normal light. But if you turn it on, off, on quick enough, it changes color temperature!
This is why I label breakers/switches the moment I move in — “Kitchen left / Hall / Fan” saves future-me so much chaos 😅 Also, delayed LEDs are the worst kind of suspense.
Every time I’ve tried this, it’s ended in a labeling disaster. Maybe it’s my luck, but electricians seem to be more interested in wiring walls than rooms. As a result, the breakers seldom come anywhere close to any logical room layout. And then there’s legacy breaker-box GCFI stuff, and homeowner renovation hacks…
I always think I’m going to do this, and I never once have. Next time for sure…
JC is the real one
