fire hazards
hopefully these things (and the other ones which are hidden behind walls) will be fixed tomorrow.
yes, this wire and its associated label were like that when we got the house. the electrical tape on the hot wire was not. i completely forgot that cable was there, as i've been preoccupied with fixing things upstairs.
this is by far the best. i couldn't get a better picture of this given the lighting conditions, so i'll do my best to explain. to the left we have a garage door opener. to the right, near the ductwork we have a light socket. in between we have an electrical rube goldberg machine. the light socket has a Y connector with a socket and a 2-prong receptacle. this runs over to the floor beam where it intermingles with the cable line and the piece of sheet metal which is tacked onto the ceiling for no particular reason. then it runs under the beam and around to the other side where there is another light socket. but not just any light socket. you know how light sockets usually mount onto a junction box? well, this one is special. it mounts onto a piece of sheet metal. said piece of sheet metal then has a hole drilled through it so it can hang from a hook drilled into the ceiling. light socket has another Y connector, followed by a 2-prong adapter, and this is where the garage door opener plugs in.
the best part of all of this is, this is all controlled by a light switch. so if you turn the light off in the garage, you can't use the garage door.