Sad day for appliances

My vacuum died yesterday. Not in the stopped-working-for-no-apparent-reason or works-but-not-as-well-as-it-should way. I mean died in a blaze of glory, with sparks and a poof.

It's partly my fault. Partly.

It's mostly ChaCha's apartment complex's fault, but I'll let her feel free to state what originally happened to it.

Turning back the clock to 6 months ago...

After my divorce, my ex got the vacuum. Fine with me, I never really did like it anyway. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to shop for shiny things with flashing lights and noises and bells and whistles and and and... So I went for a groovy little Bissel number which was far better than I really needed, but me being a guy bought it. How sad is it that I'm such a geek that I get a vacuum for bragging rights?


Pretty, n'est-ce pas?

So enter ChaCha. She has allergies, and three cats (I know, I'm seeing the crazy cat lady). So I offered to loan her Ol' Red. The next part is for her to explain, but she ended up pulling eight pounds of a white powder. No telling what the street value was of her carpet. Anyway, after I got it back, it never did work right again. I cleaned out all three filters, including actually removing the hepa filter and it still wouldn't work.

Three weeks of it sitting idly downstairs in my dining room really started to bug me. Since I was off yesterday and had vowed to actually do stuff I took it to the upstairs bathroom to see if I can make it work again.

Disassembling it, it turned out to be much worse than I thought. Every piece I removed dumped tons more of the carpet coke onto my bathroom floor. Every piece that didn't have electronics attached were cleaned out in the tub, and the rest got a good rubbing from a dry washcloth. I felt happy about the results, especially once I saw that certain pieces were in fact NOT white. Then came the reassembly.

Let me pause for a second to mention that I am not a mechanic. I don't know much, but I do know electronics. I did have all the wiring hooked back up in minutes, the actual reassembly of the rest of it took a bit longer. I was very pleased with the result. In fact, I did so well in putting it back together that I even had a screw left over. That, I'm convinced shows a natural aptitude.

So here's where it's partly my fault. Even though water came nowhere near the electronic components, I should have let it sit for a day or so to let any residual water elsewhere in the unit (hehe..."unit") dry.
But, all caution to the wind, I plugged it in.
Ok, all the power is still on. Good sign.
I reach over and flip the switch.

...

It wasn't as dramatic as I hinted at earlier. But there was a flash of light from the base, the bulb blew, and a spark jumped out and landed near my foot. A tiny puff of smoke wisped from the front.

I stood there blankly, long enough to let the faint smell of ozone waft to my nostrils. Moment of silence. Let us pray.

So if anyone out there is interested in a slightly used vacuum, I can make you a helluva deal (In accordance with Texas disclosure laws: it does have a slight electrical problem).