In the last several months, there is an interesting experience I have had multiple times: people (mostly women) have told me how impressive it was that I could perform mechanical task X (where X was in the set {replacing a faucet in a bathroom, replacing a timed light switch, adjusting the hood on a car}), and how their husbands/boyfriend/pretty much every other male in their life are completely mechanically incompetent. As such, I thought that it would be a good idea to include this here. Indeed, there are several significant benefits of knowing your way around a wrench, the first being the innate sense of accomplishment that one gets from fixing things. Additionally, while the costs of acquiring a decent set of decent quality tools is not completely trivial ($200-300 new, maybe 25% of that used, but takes a fair bit of searching around to find stuff that is in good condition), the financial benefit is significant; each of the tasks above took 15-20 minutes to perform, but professionals always have a minimum charge (frequently an hour), and it can be weeks before you can get someone to make a house call, especially if you need them to come on the weekend. Additionally, you may end up waiting for 4-6 hours on the day of the appointment for the plumber to do 20 minutes worth of work, for which he will then charge you 1-1.5 hours of labor for.

Note that there are some risks when doing "mechanical" work. One possibility is that, if you don't know what you are doing, you can end up with a lot more damage than you started out with (think installing a faucet incorrectly, and flooding your whole house). Alternately, some of the tasks I am referring to can be quite dangerous, and in particular, significant caution needs to be exercised when working with electricity (I learned this first hand when I accidentally dropped a hand wrench across the terminals of a fully-charged car battery . . .). However, in this sense, as well as just getting an idea for what steps/skills a certain task requires, the interwebs can come to your rescue. As such, it isn't necessary to have someone around to actually show you how to do these kinds of things. That being said, don't be shy about asking for help (even professional help) if you can't quite get something to work out. Most reputable professionals won't mind if you watch how they do a task for educational purposes.

And, last but not least, knowing how to turn a wrench is extremely useful if you are inclined to pursue next weeks topic: Motorsports.