I didn't do anything particularly exciting yesterday afternoon/evening; after returning from school, I went to the mall to get some groceries, made dinner, went back to the mall to get some household stuff, and, well, here we are. By some fluke, however, I was faced with three separate challenges of engineering during this epic (boring) journey. This is their story.
I had met a fellow teacher at the Colombia version of Wal-Mart to help me shop (I didn't really need it, but it was very nice of her). Upon checking out and having all my new items bagged, she was sure I would take a cab, since I had bought about $100 worth of stuff, and $100 buys you a lot more in Colombia than it does in Canada. She thought there was no way I could make it home without some sort of automotive assistance.
Little did she know.
Engineering Problem #1, Solved.
Upon arriving home, I began to unload my new possessions, among them a sweet bridge-over-sink style dish rack.
Beautiful, ain't it?
SO WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT??!?!
The legs were meant to attach with the mechanism shown: the smaller cylinder was supposed to fit into the bigger one. However, this proved to be impossible on two of the four corners. Shoddy Colombian manufacturing I guess. We need some good old fashioned Vietnamese labour over here.
To solve this problem, I first tried the strategy employed by most when facing a challenge such as this:
That proved unsuccessful.
Next, I used my Engineering Skillz to brainstorm! I came up with the extremely complex and forward-thinking and engineery solution of getting something pointy and pointing it at the thing.
Easier said than done.
But, after literally minutes of hard work, it was finished. Engineering Problem #2, Solved.
Now, you're probably wondering about the third engineering challenge, as mentioned in the introduction. Well, after I thought of this idea for a blog post, I had to figure out how to set the timer on my camera!
Engineering Problem #3, Solved.
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