Last Place You Look
For over two months I had been looking for a couple of lost items and I'd turned over the whole house, several times, to find them. The articles were a pair of gloves and a remote for the garage door opener.
I can pinpoint the day they were lost--January 10, 2014. That's the day on the receipt from Home Depot where I bought a new Genie garage door opener. Since I was replacing a similar opener the project was not very difficult. I removed the old opener then assembled and installed the new one after altering the hanging straps and front hardware to accept it. This was several hours' work since I don't hurry any more and it turned out fine.
Then I had to install the actuator at the door to the house (the existing wiring worked fine), the exterior actuator which works by a pin code, and the two safety sensors (for these new wiring was needed because my old door didn't have them). All in all I was in the garage quite a while by the time I finished programming the remote devices.
One of my cars has the built in remote so I planned to program that on a later day. So, I had an extra remote to store away "just-in-case".
With Spring on the way I uncovered my sports car this month and decided to re-program its built in remote to the new garage door opener. Even manuals for the opener and the car couldn't help me get the job done and I gave up in frustration. Then I went to look for the stored remote, also with no luck.
The gloves were another story. I bought the gloves this winter as liners for the mittens I also bought for cold weather walks. I walk every day and this winter's cold became a challenge for keeping my hands warm. Gander Mountain had the right combination and the liners had the nice added feature of special thumb and index finger tips to operate my smart phone. How fun!
Going back to the garage door opener project a moment: the new gloves were part of the reason I had to replace it. The opener had stopped working but made noises like it was trying to work. I got up on a ladder to check it out, then scanned some webpages for parts--one or two computer cards that controlled the drive mechanism--and I figured I could fix it for under $50. Because it would take a few days to get the parts online I decided to re-assemble the machine until I could do the job. It being cold in the garage I was wearing the new glove liners with the fancy finger tips. I didn't actually know the silvery-looking fingertips were metallic until I wrestled the machine's case back into place and accidently grazed the main control board with my index finger in the process. Sparks flew! And then when I tried the actuator the opener was completely dead. I knew that board was very expensive so I quickly did the math and determined a new machine would be as frugal and fixing the old one. While I was cleaning up from that failed project the new glove liners went missing.
So yesterday I resumed my periodic search for the missing items nine weeks after they disappeared. I had absolutely no memory of intentionally putting them away someplace specific so I checked the attic over the garage, upstairs, downstairs and my basement shop. No luck. Late last night I tried again but this time I grabbed a big flashlight to point into drawers and crevices to better focus my eyes on the search. While in my shop I had a thought that I'd used some wrenches I keep in a toolbox so I checked it. No luck. We had long ago decided that if we found the gloves we would find the extra remote as well, and vice versa. And then I had another thought. I often use a carpenter's apron to hold screw drivers and such when I'm on a ladder working and I keep it in a drawer below the tool drawer. So I opened it to check the lumpy-looking apron. I picked it up and, unrolling it, noticed that the lumpiness wasn't hard like pliers. So wouldn't you know I reached into the pocket and found the gloves with the fancy fingertips in the last place I looked.
I continued rummaging through the carpenter's apron for the remote but no luck. We were wrong about the lost items being together. So I mused on this for a few minutes and thought "Where would I normally put a small extra remote that I may or may not need? Ah, the kitchen junk drawer."
I took my big flashlight upstairs to search that drawer for the twentieth time. In my mind I had always been searching for a plastic bag with the door opener's operating manual, installation manual, and any extras (like the remote). But a few days earlier my wife disabused me of that idea when she showed me the manuals she had dutifully filed away under "Current Year Major Purchases". Actually, that's how I remembered losing the remote on January 10th.
So I dug into the junk drawer focusing the search with my light. The junk drawer has dividers and boxes to organize the mess. Right behind the box of car key fobs is a plastic tray brimming with, well, junk. I dug in and noticed a little plastic sleeve and pulled it out by its corner. Of course it was the remote in the last place you look.
With the manuals my wife located I had the new remote programmed in short order today and we took a ride in the sports car just to prove that it works. All is fine. Yet I'm still frustrated that I was unable to get the car's built in remote to work. One day when it's warmer I will try that exercise again.
I can pinpoint the day they were lost--January 10, 2014. That's the day on the receipt from Home Depot where I bought a new Genie garage door opener. Since I was replacing a similar opener the project was not very difficult. I removed the old opener then assembled and installed the new one after altering the hanging straps and front hardware to accept it. This was several hours' work since I don't hurry any more and it turned out fine.
Then I had to install the actuator at the door to the house (the existing wiring worked fine), the exterior actuator which works by a pin code, and the two safety sensors (for these new wiring was needed because my old door didn't have them). All in all I was in the garage quite a while by the time I finished programming the remote devices.
One of my cars has the built in remote so I planned to program that on a later day. So, I had an extra remote to store away "just-in-case".
With Spring on the way I uncovered my sports car this month and decided to re-program its built in remote to the new garage door opener. Even manuals for the opener and the car couldn't help me get the job done and I gave up in frustration. Then I went to look for the stored remote, also with no luck.
The gloves were another story. I bought the gloves this winter as liners for the mittens I also bought for cold weather walks. I walk every day and this winter's cold became a challenge for keeping my hands warm. Gander Mountain had the right combination and the liners had the nice added feature of special thumb and index finger tips to operate my smart phone. How fun!
Going back to the garage door opener project a moment: the new gloves were part of the reason I had to replace it. The opener had stopped working but made noises like it was trying to work. I got up on a ladder to check it out, then scanned some webpages for parts--one or two computer cards that controlled the drive mechanism--and I figured I could fix it for under $50. Because it would take a few days to get the parts online I decided to re-assemble the machine until I could do the job. It being cold in the garage I was wearing the new glove liners with the fancy finger tips. I didn't actually know the silvery-looking fingertips were metallic until I wrestled the machine's case back into place and accidently grazed the main control board with my index finger in the process. Sparks flew! And then when I tried the actuator the opener was completely dead. I knew that board was very expensive so I quickly did the math and determined a new machine would be as frugal and fixing the old one. While I was cleaning up from that failed project the new glove liners went missing.
So yesterday I resumed my periodic search for the missing items nine weeks after they disappeared. I had absolutely no memory of intentionally putting them away someplace specific so I checked the attic over the garage, upstairs, downstairs and my basement shop. No luck. Late last night I tried again but this time I grabbed a big flashlight to point into drawers and crevices to better focus my eyes on the search. While in my shop I had a thought that I'd used some wrenches I keep in a toolbox so I checked it. No luck. We had long ago decided that if we found the gloves we would find the extra remote as well, and vice versa. And then I had another thought. I often use a carpenter's apron to hold screw drivers and such when I'm on a ladder working and I keep it in a drawer below the tool drawer. So I opened it to check the lumpy-looking apron. I picked it up and, unrolling it, noticed that the lumpiness wasn't hard like pliers. So wouldn't you know I reached into the pocket and found the gloves with the fancy fingertips in the last place I looked.
I continued rummaging through the carpenter's apron for the remote but no luck. We were wrong about the lost items being together. So I mused on this for a few minutes and thought "Where would I normally put a small extra remote that I may or may not need? Ah, the kitchen junk drawer."
I took my big flashlight upstairs to search that drawer for the twentieth time. In my mind I had always been searching for a plastic bag with the door opener's operating manual, installation manual, and any extras (like the remote). But a few days earlier my wife disabused me of that idea when she showed me the manuals she had dutifully filed away under "Current Year Major Purchases". Actually, that's how I remembered losing the remote on January 10th.
So I dug into the junk drawer focusing the search with my light. The junk drawer has dividers and boxes to organize the mess. Right behind the box of car key fobs is a plastic tray brimming with, well, junk. I dug in and noticed a little plastic sleeve and pulled it out by its corner. Of course it was the remote in the last place you look.
With the manuals my wife located I had the new remote programmed in short order today and we took a ride in the sports car just to prove that it works. All is fine. Yet I'm still frustrated that I was unable to get the car's built in remote to work. One day when it's warmer I will try that exercise again.
posted by Phil Govert at 12:59 PM
2 Comments:
This was most frustrating because I was checking the very same places Phil was checking. I mean, great minds think alike, right? So I told him we need to have only one box to put odds and ends and that will alleviate this pained process.
Now you need to write the saga of the lost RV key fob!
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