I whined about not fulfilling my technical aspirations over the holiday, but the truth is that I did get a few things done — just not the ones I had intended. I wasted a solid couple of days trying to get Boot Camp installed, for one thing (it turns out not to be so easy when you have a heavily fragmented disk and aren’t willing to reformat it). And I constructed this monstrosity:
We’d hung up lights for a little holiday shindig, you see. But this year we were forced into the bigger-bulbed option, as Target’s clearance Christmas light section was picked over a bit faster than I had planned. I think it ended up looking a little bit nicer, but the default level of illumination afforded was a little higher than we wanted for a proper party.
So: to Logan hardware! It’s actually pretty simple to make a dimmer box suitable for incandescent bulbs. Grab an extension cord, a dimmer switch, a few spare wire nuts, a junction box and a switch faceplate — I’d suggest plastic for the last two items since a) it’s cheaper and b) it’s less likely to result in your electrocution if you screw something up. All told your purchase should come to under $10.
Snip the extension cord in two, thread it into the junction box and wire it up to the dimmer as the included instructions dictate. The wire connected to the smaller prong on the extension cord’s plug is the hot lead — that’s the one that gets routed through the dimmer. The other is neutral; reconnect it to itself. If the extension cord has three prongs, the bottom one is ground; it should be reconnected to itself and to the dimmer’s ground wire. If there isn’t a ground wire, just wrap the dimmer’s ground lead up in tape so it can’t accidentally come in contact with anything energized.
Screw everything together and voila: you’re done. Keep a fire extinguisher handy, never leave this unattended, never connect it to anything other than a reasonably short string of incandescent lights, and resign yourself to my complete disavowal of any responsibility for the results of using this horribly unsafe gadget. It works great for me, though!
