Weekend Assignment: #297: There are times when we hire professionals to build or fix things for us, and other times when we attempt the job ourselves. Some people pride themselves on their DIY skills or electronics geekery, while others leave it to the experts as much as possible. How about you? Is your first instinct to call for help, or do it yourself?Like last weekend's assignment, you can put me down for somewhere in between. As Clint Eastwood once said, "A man's got to know his limitations," and I'm pretty good at knowing mine. If it's a simple project like changing the oil in the car or something similar, I'll tackle it myself. The last such job was replacing some of the drain pipes under the kitchen sink. If it's a little more complicated I'll try to find someone who knows what they're doing to come over and help me, i.e., make sure I don't screw it up worse than it was before I started. If it's still under warranty or absolutely necessary, I'll send it in for repairs or call someone to come out. It all depends on how complicated it's going to be. I'm not real handy, but I do have some skills.
With cars, I can usually figure out what's wrong with it by what it's doing, or at least narrow it down to a couple of possibilities. I may or may not know how to fix it, but I can tell you what's wrong with it. Around the house, I can saw a board or hammer a nail or connect some PVC pipes, but forget about any kind of major renovations. Computers are a special category. I've often stated that I know just enough about them to turn a minor problem into something major.
Of course, the whole topic reminds me of that song by Peter Gabriel...
1 comment:
Even replacing a pipe impresses the heck out of me! Co0ngratulations on having "some skills," because I'm sure it helps a lot. Certainly it's a lot easier to deal with auto mechanics when you have some idea what you're talking about.
Post a Comment