What I Haven't Mentioned

What I haven't mentioned, is that a couple of things have happened while all this rain and flooding has been going on.

One, my desktop PC has totally crapped out. I can't get it to boot up at all. When I press the ON/OFF button, I hear the DVD player cycle, and a couple of fans start up, but nothing else happens.

The other thing that has happened is the gate motor has quit working. That, and the gate lights as well.

Yesterday, I took the PC in to Fred at Corozal Virtual Office, for him to take a look at it and see if he can find out what's wrong.

Then, I called Arturo Rancheron, the electrician, to see if he can get the gate motor working again.

He and his wife (who's an able assistant) came and began troubleshooting the gate area. What they found was a lot of the wiring was, in places, stripped of insulation, so it was shorting out.

Broken Pot Metal Waterproof Housing

Arturo blamed geckos for eating the insulation. I'm more inclined to believe ants are the culprits. Especially since each receptacle box they opened was stuffed to the gills with dead ants and debris from their nesting.

Receptacle Clogged With Dead Ants and Debris

Luckily, using my fish-tape, Arturo was able to run all new wiring to the gate motor at least. He tested the link with his meter, so we know juice is at the motor. Unfortunately, the motor isn't responding. I'm going to have to call Roger Chang at Capital Metal for his repair guy to come look at the motor. Dang it. And the gate lights still don't work. That means, all the rest of the wiring for each of the lights will have to be replaced as well. What a pain. Well, as they say, or at least as I say, often enough, "If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun."

Arturo Cleaning Dead Ants Out of Receptacle

 Lots and lots of dead ants and stripped wiring, in some cases several inches at a time, so it's just bare copper wire touching each other and causing shorts.

Even More in the Cavity Behind

The ants are doing a couple of things. One, they're looking for high ground to avoid the flood water that is accumulating everywhere; and Two, they're probably fire ants or a close cousin and as such, they're attracted to electrical fields. They cause outages and shorts and get themselves electrocuted by the thousands.

Our front gate area as been a constant attractant for ants. Must be some juicy electrical fields right around here.

Yesterday evening, I called Fred for his assessment of the PC. Not good. He apparently got it to begin to come up, but that's about it. He said the disk is telling him it's locked. He can't get it to a state where he can enter my password. Not good news. He was going to try later in the evening again, but it's looking like I may be starting from scratch - new PC, and no recoverable data. Oof course, I didn't have a viable backup plan in place. Foolish me. Well, more on that later.

So, that's all I know for now. I'll let you know more as I know more.