When you want to fix or adjust something in your house, what do you do?
Just wing it, and hope for the best?
Do you Google it?
Do you look through your drawers for the old manual that came with the item?
Are you lucky enough to have stashed all of your manuals in one place –- say, a big box?
I found my big box of manuals last week, and I have just finished scanning all 128 of them in PDF format.
Now I can search for any word in a manual. I don’t really think I’ll be doing that any time soon, but it’s there if I need it.
Besides all the pages of the 128 manuals I scanned, I must have thrown away another 20 manuals for products I no longer have.
In the process of adjusting and cutting the pages of manuals, I got to see features of items that I would like to go back and explore one day.
For example, I want to adjust my attic fan. It goes on all day long. One day I will have to study that manual.
I wonder how my 128 scanned manuals divide into categories?
Okay. I looked at the titles of the manuals, and assigned each a category. Then, I assigned numbers to categories, and to the manuals. Here is the breakdown:
- Audio-Visual (19)
- Heating & cooling (4)
- Games and sport (9)
- Health-related (3)
- Car-related (5)
- Home Comfort-related (3)
- Tools (8)
- Pool-related (12)
- Pond- related (5)
- Yard/Outdoor (9)
- Kitchen & bath (23)
- Garage & roof (6)
- Safety related (8)
- Home Office (4)
- Computer (7)
The total is 125. There are 128 items. I missed three. Oh, well, my eyes have been scanning papers for the past eight hours, so maybe I will get a pass on that one.
What about all the manuals that are missing? Another project would be to search the house and yard for items without manuals. Maybe next month.
Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen51@gmail.com