alexpgp | Do I like to cool, or dark?

The cord to raise or lower the window blind in my office assumes an angle of about 25 degrees with respect to the wall when I manipulate the blind. Yesterday, I found out the hard way that the "perpendicular-to-the-wall" component of the force (the part that does nothing to actually raise the blind) is sufficient to pull the fastener doodads holding the end of the blind completely out of the wall, causing the blind to fall with the kind of impact and clatter one associates with serious force.

Clatter I can deal with; it's just noise. The stuff underneath the blind when it fell doesn't generally do so well with impact, but nothing seems to be broken. But with no blind in place, the late afternoon sun shines directly into my window, so the room became pretty hot.

Galina came up with the idea of using a piece of radiant barrier that (apparently) has been abandoned by the crew that started, but never finished the job of installing it in our attic. The barrier works very well, from the temperature perspective, but it's opaque, which means the light has to stay on whenever I'm working in the office. In and of itself, since I'm using energy-efficient bulbs, the heat load from the lights is not bad, but I am coming to realize just how much I dislike working in what amounts to a windowless room.

Ah, well, live and learn...