Boiling Water
Do you ever heat water to the boiling point in your microwave? Take note! We heard a story about a 26-year-old man who wanted to have a cup of coffee. He heated the water in his microwave. When he brought the cup out, he looked into it, and all of the water in the cup blew up into his face. The accident may have caused him to lose partial sight in his left eye. The emergency-room doctor stated that this is not the first such case he has seen, and that water (alone) should never be heated in a microwave oven. If you do need to heat water in your microwave, put in a tea bag, a wooden stir stick, or something else (not metal), to diffuse the energy. A much safer course of action may be to boil water on top of your stove in a tea kettle.
(Received via forwarded e-mail from Will Mincey)
Light Switches
You know those annoying lights which have two wall-mounted switches, one at the top and one at the bottom of the stairs, or one by the front door and one in a hallway? The way to tell if the light is on is this: if both switches are either up or down, the light is on. You know it is off when one of the switches is up, and the other is down. It doesn’t matter which ones. I have found this information helpful as a totally blind person living alone who leaves lights on for reasons of safety.
(Reprinted from the Silicon Valley Council of the Blind newsletter, January 2000.)