The CPOS that saved Christmas

I almost feel bad for calling this a CPOS (cheap piece of shit) but that's really what we thought it would turn out to be when we bought it. At the end of the holiday season last year, on one of our regular trips to Home Depot (we were chest-deep in remodel back then), we bought a ton of clearance holiday items. One of those was what claimed to be an all-in-one light set fixer.

It claims to be able to detect bad bulbs in a chain of Christmas lights, fix "shunts" in the bulb settings, test bulbs, test light chains, etc. We were to say the least skeptical.

We have a pre-lit Christmas tree. Yes that means we have a fake tree. And if you are one of those who are "superior" because you get a real tree every year that smells like Christmas, all I have to ask is can you set up your Christmas tree with lights in 1 minute flat every year then retire to the couch and light a fire to enjoy your tree? (That must be a run-on sentence.) Yeah. That's what I thought. Back to the tree.

The tree comes in 3 sections which can be plugged together when it is set up but taken apart easily for more efficient storage. Sadly, we had a bulb burn out in the bottom half of the top section so our tree just looked sad and limp when it was put together. And since it was in the top section, it was pretty glaringly obvious.

Which is what prompted us to buy this light fixer tool last year when it was on deep discount for something like $5. And at the end of the Thanksgiving holidays, we pulled out our fake pre-lit tree and set to work with the little gun looking for the burnt out bulb. To both of our complete surprise, most of the features it advertised actually worked. (We couldn't test the "shunt" feature since 1) I don't know what that is, 2) I'm almost positive we didn't have one seeing as there was in fact a broken bulb.)

It has a voltage or current detector of some kind at the tip which you can just point at the wires. If it beeps, current is flowing. If it stops beeping, there is no current. You just need to find the bulb at which it beeps on one side but doesn't beep on the other meaning that bulb is interrupting the current. They even suggested to perform a binary search on the strand of bulbs but they didn't call it a binary search because apparently, normal people can't comprehend those words when they're together like that.

So thanks to the-best-$5-I've-ever-spent, our Christmas tree is whole again! Like this:

And Pixie has discovered a new favorite spot in the house. She likes to carefully crawl underneath the tree and then flop down on the tree skirt.