>Fun with Ceiling Fans
by jvaragona
>My fiance and I live in a quirky place. I have blogged about our adventures with rodents, but haven’t really touched on much else. The legal ramifications may be too risky at this point. I cannot, however, avoid this rant.
We live in a two family flat. When our landlady decorated the joint, she added pretty spiffy ceiling fans, two upstairs and two downstairs in fact. They even have their own remote controls for the ultimate in laziness. The problem lies in the technology and the thought process.
The fans have no code or anything that distinguishes one from the next, so using the remote can get tricky. Say I turn on the light on the fan in the living area, but my fiance is sleeping in the other room. If the switch to the fan in the other room is on, the light will go on along with the intended one. This goes for the fan itself as well. Like I said, great idea on paper, but already a little silly.
Up until last night, it has only happened a few times that the gal upstairs didn’t like her fan or light being on, and therefore turned one or both of ours off along with hers. It was humorous. I even spent a few hours at one time, going back and forth with them. Or is that what is going on?
I will say that we were warned of this when we moved in, but she didn’t make a big deal of it. Now is it truly the gal upstairs fighting with us electronically, or is it some kind of bad signal or interfering signal? Could it even be a ghost? Could this be the ghost of my late brother messing with my head? And what does the neighbor lady think if the same occurences are happening upstairs? Does she think we are complete assholes for playing tug-o-war with ceiling fan remote signals? My head hurts.
So last night was a warm night. We have had unusually warm temperatures in this area recently. Our mice even expressed to us that they can leave now because the cold weather has left. We had the A/C on plus various fans. When you have a fan above you, you must take advantage of it, unless you are horribly allergic to the crap flying through the air. Our bedroom fan was on full blast…for about 10 seconds. What followed was like Shock and Awe with ceiling fans. Throughout the night, we went back and forth.
Lights and fan on.
Then off.
Then fan on.
Then off.
Lights on, then off.
It was complete and utter nonsense that we have to attempt to sleep through such torture. We were dripping in sweat as much as we tried to avoid it. The fans wouldn’t stay on for more than 10 or 15 seconds. Just as we would get our hopes up, the insurgents would add their signal to the fray. It was maddening, especially for my lady. The enemy was psyching us out.
We sincerely thought of this as war. How could someone punish us like this? If you don’t like the fan, flip the switch. Don’t make us suffer by using the convenient little remote to turn it off. Or were we at war with a new type of enemy–one of the supernatural kind or the super-technological kind? I have a sneaky suspicion that Republicans are behind this mess.
Jim Varagona 
>I say, having installed several of these blasted insurgent manufactured fans myself, it is a truly dastardly situation you are in. However, there is a solution to the problem. An electrician, (OR A VERY BOLD HANDYMAN) can crack open these dastardly fans, or at least into the lighting area of said fan and or the base of said fan and find a series of coded numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc on four different insurgent manufactured extremely tiny switches. If said switches can be located, (THEY ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO EXIST) the codes can be changed. However I can’t remember the name of the last dastardly insurgent I met, however I am certain that he was indeed the only insurgent who actually followed the letter of the law. Good luck in your rat-infested ramshackly (PROBABLY SOUTH CITY) scumbucket low class dwelling. I certainly hope that there are people who give you wedding gifts enough to trade in for cash so that you can afford a down payment of like 4 or 5 grand on an equally shabby home in perhaps my neck of the woods, where you would be the parties responsible for rat deferrence, and fan compatability. As an alternate solution, it would probably do your landlord a hell of a great favor if you were to give her notice as to the hiring of a UNION ELECTRICIAN to remedy the situation. She’d probably hurry her ass up and get it done on the cheap if you so much as threatened to send such a dastardly bill as would be created by (PROBABLY ONE OF YOUR NEIGHBORS) such an overpaid bottom feeding well educated and capeable drunkard electrician.Or perhaps you could have the Don of Retail Servicing pay her a visit and do a little ‘servicing’ of his own on her home electrical devices. Either way I think she’d get the message. Good luck! P.S. I really have become quite enamoured of your work! Keep it up! This blog is fantastical!
>My brother Fantabulo and I have just sinisterly finished blowing through your blog. We have concluded that we are both non-remote controlled fans of your blogging. Further we hereby claim responsibility for the fanatical terrorist activity that you have been subject to. Using our high tech ultra expensive republican sanctioned IFD’s (NOT IED’S, but rather IMPROVISED FANATICAL DEVICES) we torture many of your friends and neighbors. We are a coalition of the labotomized and we seek to bring fanarcy to this world!!! FAN HA ACKBAR!!!