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.”
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.
John carmack throwing shade on lightswitches was not on my bingo card
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
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
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.
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.
I definitely learned the garage and kitchen lights the quickest. I still can’t figure out any rhyme or reason for why they’re grouped the way they are, 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.
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.
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…
I wonder if he uses VIM, because that user experience is oh boy…
Incredible?
JC is the real one
hotel rooms
fucking hotel rooms!
When the vessel containing omnipotent hivemind and personal concierge to all known electronic signals in the observable universe John Carmack speaks to us, we should listen.
This looks almost like Loss
I am calling the police.
My favorite is when one of the switches does nothing you can visibly see and you never find out what it’s for.
Merry Christmas and a Happy 1985.
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.
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.
The yellow sheathed cable can be buried. The cheap white stuff cannot, at least not for long.
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.
Till some guy in Germany calls you and tells you to cut it out.
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.
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!
Screw haunted houses, this is a real cursed house
What the actual fuck lmao.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
