Troubleshooting

 When K&L moved everything in, they found, setting up the bedroom, that the light switch (common to many bedrooms) that controlled a wall socket so that you could turn a lamp on and off from the door, was a problem.  If anything was plugged into it, and switched on, and you turned it on from the wall switch, it blew the circuit, and that circuit shut down about half the apartment.  (Including my computer in the office.)

Well, I've had other things to do.  But, finally I told the management about it.  they were quite responsive, and got an electrician out fairly quickly.

He undid the wall plate, and connected a tester, and couldn't find anything wrong.  So first he tried to blame the lamp.  Gloria chose those lamps (they are a set of three) over thirty years ago, and we've been using them with no problems, so I was pretty sure that couldn't be the problem.  But it wasn't until I took the lamp, plugged it in elsewhere, and demonstrated that it didn't blow just *any* circuit that the electrician would look into it further.

We have to do troubleshooting all the time, in the computer world.  You get used to confirming that a suspected situation is, in fact, the problem.

So, having had his first idea shot down, the electrician got down to work.  He took apart the wall plug, and replaced some stuff.  He took apart the switch plate, and replaced some stuff.  He didn't consider the circuit breaker itself, because they (the electrical firm) always used top quality parts, and it *couldn't* be the circuit breaker.  (I assume they are the ones who electrified the building.)  But, having exhausted all the other possibilities, he replaced the circuit breaker.  That fixed the problem.  So, obviously, that was the problem.

(The electrician is so fixated on the quality of those parts that he's going to send the defective circuit breaker back to the distributor ...)