Dumb Things We Have Done

OK, just to poke a little fun at ourselves, tell us something dumb you have done. I don't mean tragic dumb like "I married Judy", I mean silly dumb.

Here's one of mine to start out: Last week I had to fax an important document across the country, so first I made a photostat so I would have a copy for my files after the fax had gone.

Way too many to write them all. I hung a new door in our home about 20 years ago and it dragged the carpet severly. No problem, I pulled the hinge pins out, took it outside on some saw horses and trimmed off about a half inch. When I brought it back and reinstalled, it still dragged the carpet but now had a nice ventilation space at the top of the jamb.

coalkirk wrote:Way too many to write them all. I hung a new door in our home about 20 years ago and it dragged the carpet severly. No problem, I pulled the hinge pins out, took it outside on some saw horses and trimmed off about a half inch. When I brought it back and reinstalled, it still dragged the carpet but now had a nice ventilation space at the top of the jamb.

I've done that (only once, though!).

Like I said, I've got lot's of them. In the early 70's I had a van but not much money. So when it needed a tune-up and oil change, I decided to buy the parts and do it myself. Never mind that somehow, I never had any experience doing it before. How hard could it be? First, I removed the distributor cap, rotor and all of the spark plugs and wires. After carefully gapping the plugs and installing them, I started to install the new plug wires and realized I had no more idea which wire went to which cylinder than flying to the moon. That wasn't all. After draining the oil and replacing the oil filter, I carefully added the oil. When I looked down, there was oil running from under the van right between my feet. No oil pan plug.

This was when I first started my construction business, I got a flat on my truck, left rear, had alot on my mind was starting a big job. The next morning I went to the lumber yard to pick up a big load of framing lumber, truck was maxed out. I left the yard & was driving up the on ramp to the highway & all of a sudden I hear a big thump like hitting a pothole but wait I see a tire pass me on the left yea it was mine. Forgot to tighten the lug nuts.

Many years ago, early in the morning while still half asleep I went to start my pickup. The battery was dead, really dead. No problem, I'll just put the battery charger on and take the car to work. Following good procedures I removed one of the battery post leads and connected the charger. Went to work. I couldn't get to looking at he truck until the weekend, so the charger stayed attached. Weekend came and I reconnected the removed battery lead. Zap, big, big spark. What the hell. There must be a really good short that drained the battery. I start looking, can't find anything. Looks like it's alternator related. I can start the truck when the alternator is disconnected. Connect it and Zap, big, big spark. I get out the shot manuals on the alternator. Take it apart check for shorts, bad diodes, etc. Find nothing wrong. Give up and think about how I'm going to get it to the dealer. A couple of days go by and I'm going to give it another try. Wondering if the battery is still good I measure the battery voltage. Slam, the needle moves down scale. Reverse the leads and it's 12.6 volts. OK. But then I notice the polarity is reversed. I had charged the battery up BACKWARDS. Yes, you can do that if the battery is completely dead initially and if you charge for a long time. Dam. Did I burn out the diodes in the alternator? Fortunately not. But now I had to discharge the battery and charge it up correctly. So with the alternator disconnected I just left the headlights on. Now all my neighbors were coming over all calling me telling me my headlights were on. I finally put tape on the headlights and just let them drain the battery. Re-charged the battery with the correct polarity and all was fine. Later I learned that reversed charging a battery is good for a battery, it removes the crud build up on the plates. Likely not true today with the different plate/chemistry in todays batteries. I now check lead polarity carefully when charging batteries.

Big mistake I made about 2 years ago on the forum and lost about 200 topics, roughly 1000+ posts...

This was when it was just a single forum for coal and I had the others that never got used. Anyhow I decided to split the single coal forum up into different categories like I have now and get rid of the unused ones. So first rule is when doing major changes to forum you do full backup etc. Made my backup and proceeded to rename a few of the old forums. I moved the appropiate posts from the single forum into the newly renamed forums. Checked everything out and everything looked great, functioned no issues... So after about a day I made new backup and deleted old one.

Anyhow I think it might have been a day or two later I notice there is very few topics in the stoker forum... Can't find them, no where to be found.

Here the forum that I had renamed was one I was using for a classifieds section. One of the features of phpbb is you can set it to autoprune forums, for example you can set it to delete threads after a week if there is no replies which is what I had that particular forum set to so I could just leave it be and it would clean itself out.. So the second I moved those posts into that forum most got pruned, I didn't notice it at first. Wouldn't have been a big problem except as mentioned I overwrote the backup that did contain them. The backup I did have was made after they were deleted.

So the moral of the story is have a backup for the backup. Now I have daily backup each day, I keep a weeks worth of them. An then I 1 for each month. Haven't gotten to it but at some point i'll have a one hour backup.

I was in Utah's Monument Valley, you know the one you always see on TV with the couple of big formations. anyhow I'm snapping picture like a nut and probably went through about a whole roll in from start to finish. It was a decent SLR camera. As we are leaving we are at the northern end and I think it was formation called table rock. Anyhow it was last stop and I put the camera on top of the car to go take piss and sure enough I come back... and no you didn't guess it... no one took it, I get in the car and drive away. I heard it fall off but I thought it was just rock or something as stuff was always hitting the car on those roads. Anyhow didn't realize it for many many miles, not sure if it was the loss of the pictures or the camera which was worse.

Here's picture from wikipedia:

read my signature!!!!

Okay…dumb things.
I’m some what mechanically and electronically inclined. I have been working with electronics for over 20 years. This simple mistake my family keeps reminding me of.

One day my daughter was using my ProForm Elliptical trainer. She said she hit her knee on the post where the arm attachments pivot and the display went out. First things first, remove 4 “D” cell batteries, check with multimeter, they’re a little low so I replace with 4 new ones. Test…no display…crap! Time to break out the tools. Took display off and did some visual inspect along with some resistance checks here and there. Decision…must be a switch or sensor. Started taking this whole elliptical apart, carefully placing every screw, nut, washer, component, etc, strategically with each other for easier re-assembly. Naturally the wife has to come down and ask questions and naturally the daughters do too…pests. “STAY BACK…don’t come to close I have crap laying all over the place.”
Anyway…took that whole #@!$ machine apart and didn’t find any electrical or electronic problems. So after a few beers while sitting there, looking at it, retracing my steps of anything I may have missed, I realize one thing….I never checked to see if the new batteries were good to start with….

Well, I took the batteries out and yup they were good…but I installed them wrong.

Dumb thing #1 Installed the batteries wrong
Dumb thing #2 I told my wife the whole story

Damn!! Been thinking for hours but can't come up with anything dumb I've ever done!!!

Devil,

Alzhiemers setting in, is it?

BK

bksaun wrote:Devil,

Alzhiemers setting in, is it?

BK

LOL...Touche!

C'mon Devil, you know what it is...

... same as mine ...

... arguing progressive politics on a coal forum!

AHAHA thats funny stockingfull. here's one of mine: I have a motorcycle junkyard, and part of my deal when selling parts is I like to make sure that they are good. So when an old parts bike comes in I put fresh gas in and clean the carbs and jump start it to see what works and what doesn't. I had just gotten in a 1983 CB1000 with the dual range tranny that I had never seen before, it started up easy and the tires were full of air and the bike looked pretty good. So off I went, tested 1st, second, 3rd,....up to 5th gear high range just going easy. No problems, everything looks good, time to test the throttle response, Yea this things got some balls! I crank her up to about 100 and I go to slow down and there is no front brake lever! OK I push down on the rear brake pedal and nothing. Then I remembered talking to the guy while my life was flashing before my eyes "It's all there except I took the calipers off because they were sticking, they are in the box there...." OH SH%T no brakes, and I'm on this thing in a pair of shorts and flip flops and T-shirt, no helmet or gloves or anything. Needless to say I didn't crash and burn but man I felt dumb. I got it slowed down to about 10 by downshifting and coasting around the block a few times, then wore a hole in my boots.