Appliance Repair
Appliance Repair
[Cueball faces Megan and White Hat as he stands in the middle of a mess of a dissasembled machine, holding a screwdriver.] Cueball: After disassembling and inspecting the humidifier, I've determined that the main problem with it is that someone took it apart.

Cueball is either trying to repair his appliances himself or possibly running an appliance repair service. Although, he isn't doing much in the repairs aspect, as he is diagnosing problems with the appliances that he himself caused. Megan and White Hat (supposedly) call him over to have him fix a humidifier that isn't working. As most repairmen/handymen do, he takes apart the machine to find the root of the problem. However, after this he states the reason it isn't working is because someone took it apart. In this case it was Cueball himself. This would not be very helpful for repairing the appliance. [ citation needed ]
In the title text it is mentioned that Cueball is holding up a three-phase motor that he has taken from the humidifier. Normally when a person repairing an appliance shows you a part, they are showing you the part of the machine that was broken. In this comic however, Cueball is just showing off a (presumably) random part of the machine and stating that the problem is that the machine it came from is broken – something that was already known and unlikely to help find the root cause of the problem. In addition, it is unlikely that the part being held ever would have worked, because three-phase motors won't work on residential power in North America. Residential humidifiers use single-phase voltage , while three-phase equipment uses three-phase voltage .
This might also be a reference to self reference which is referenced in xkcd sometimes.
[Cueball faces Megan and White Hat as he stands in the middle of a mess of a dissasembled machine, holding a screwdriver.] Cueball: After disassembling and inspecting the humidifier, I've determined that the main problem with it is that someone took it apart.
