Never be so stupid as I was

[Trymon]

I'd like to share my stupidity and with sharing this maybe I could prevent that somebody does the same mistake by just not thinking.
Basically I can't do anything right now as I've sent all my DMMs to a calibration lab. Now I started to do some experiments with voltage references and have noting to measure except my el cheapo 2,5 digit hardware store DMM.

Never ever send every device of a kind you have for calibration (I don't see the available DMM as serious lab device.). Now I have to wait until I get them back.
Well there is nothing more to say and feel free to tell me that I should think before I act.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Ebay is your friend.

Some might commiserate here..
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/102400/

[Trymon]

Well I have test gear, it's just at a calibration lab.
At the other hand, you can't have enough DMMs i guess.

edit: oh now I fully understood your posting entirely. There is already a thread for poor souls like mine that need therapy.

[Zeyneb]

Hmm, there still might be something useful to do. Some ideas:

1. DIY oil change on your car. Or any other car maintenance thing.
2. Doing the dishes.
3. vacuum the house.
4. create shelf space by trowing away stuff you never going to need again.
5. clean gutters.
6. anything on the ToDo list regarding friends, family and acquaintances.

[bob91343]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

[daqq]

It's as I've always said: If you have N DMMs, you will soon find out that the proper number is N+1.

[Rick Law]

Only the mistakes that you didn't learn from are stupid mistakes.

I am confident what you've just learn from this "lesson" will gain more for you in the future than what you've just paid for this "lesson".

[Cubdriver]

Well I have test gear, it's just at a calibration lab.
At the other hand, you can't have enough DMMs i guess.

edit: oh now I fully understood your posting entirely. There is already a thread for poor souls like mine that need therapy.

Be forewarned, the therapy we provide there is of the retail variety, and WILL cause your credit card to cry.   

(And regardless of the particular reason, if you don't have enough meters, you need more.  Period, full stop.    )

-Pat

[TimFox]

R A Pease, rest his soul, had a complaint about the calibration police at a workplace who would take equipment from a test bench on their schedule to send out for calibration, without checking if the equipment were needed that week.

[Ed.Kloonk]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Drain the oil. Phone rings. Distracted. Come back to car. Fill engine with new oil. Why is it not showing on the dipstick yet? Why do my feet feel wet?

Yep. I wouldn't have thought it could happen. But it did.

[Rick Law]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Drain the oil. Phone rings. Distracted. Come back to car. Fill engine with new oil. Why is it not showing on the dipstick yet? Why do my feet feel wet?

Yep. I wouldn't have thought it could happen. But it did.

This is not nearly as bad as another real-life nutty DIY oil change mistake.  Before you think the guy is really dumb - a qualifier: We were both full time college students and working full time plus as much over-time as possible to pay for college.  So we both were sleep-deprived almost every day.  I did my fair share of dumb things while sleep-deprived.  Amazing how brainless one can be when doing things while heavily in need of sleep.

The guy has a Pinto (remember that car?  it was designed to be sold at below $1 per pound when purchased new).  He got it used.  He did his first-time DIY oil change.  Seeing how dirty the oil looks, he use the garden hose to rise the inside first...  He did got his car running again, after it was in the shop for weeks...

Not his first mistake with that car.  One time, I heard him grunting upon arrival at work.  He had driven to work hand-brakes ON (> 20 miles on the highway) and only realized he did that when he arrived the parking lot at work! 

Good news is, he was majoring in Business and not anything engineering, so it is not likely that he was the designer of the bridge you are about to drive on.

[CatalinaWOW]

Perhaps doing dumb things is something that should be required of any Turing Test.  If the machine isn't making stupid mistakes it isn.t intelligent in the same way humans are.  We all have done them and continue to do them.  At least your dumb thing doesn't involve injury or permanent loss of equipment.  Many of us can vouch for much worse outcomes.

[tszaboo]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Then we get on a bicycle and go to the nearest car shop, which is probably 2-4 km away.

[james_s]

Drain the oil. Phone rings. Distracted. Come back to car. Fill engine with new oil. Why is it not showing on the dipstick yet? Why do my feet feel wet?

Yep. I wouldn't have thought it could happen. But it did.

 

I did exactly that once. Except I don't think my feet got wet, I heard the sound of liquid dribbling just about the time I'd finished pouring in the first quart of new oil. It was fun trying to fumble the plug in while avoiding the rapidly expanding lake of oil on my garage floor.

[Zero999]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Then we get on a bicycle and go to the nearest car shop, which is probably 2-4 km away.

I dumb thing I did a couple of years ago was bodge a repair to the front mudgaurd. I fixed it with cheap cable ties, rather than buying a new one. It got caught between the front wheel and frame, causing me to flip over the handlebars, headbutt the pavement and break my thumb. I went to hospital, as I had mild concussion, got a CT scan, but didn't realise my thumb was broken, until a couple of weeks later. This meant it never fully recovered and my left thumb is still weaker than my right, which is annoying being left handed.

[HighVoltage]

A student friend working at a truck repair shop here in Germany was told to fill new oil in to a big 10 Cylinder truck engine after an oil drain.

They had a supply hose with electric pump for the new oil. And he had the nozzle in the engine and waited until the engine was literally filled up to the top of the valve cover and had overfloated the engine.

He was surprised the engine did not start!

[nctnico]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Then we get on a bicycle and go to the nearest car shop, which is probably 2-4 km away.

Indeed. I once got a new car battery using my bike. I had a flat battery AND there was a power outage so I couldn't charge it. Only option was to get a new battery in order to get going in time for an appointment.

[Psi]

Don't feel to stupid,  I have blown up 4x  440mA fluke fuses in the last 2 weeks.
Prior to that I think I blew up one in the last 5 years.

[rstofer]

What's the problem?  Amazon Prime delivers here every day!  I could have a Fluke 101 here later this afternoon if I order in the next 3 hours.  There are several other models that could be here tomorrow.

That's here in the US, I have no idea what it's like in Germany...

[Zeyneb]

What's the problem?  Amazon Prime delivers here every day!  I could have a Fluke 101 here later this afternoon if I order in the next 3 hours.  There are several other models that could be here tomorrow.

That's here in the US, I have no idea what it's like in Germany...

Don't know for Germany exactly. But an order from Amazon.com can take 15 days to get here in the Netherlands. But how about money? You act as if money can never be an issue. If you don't care about it why not paypal some of yours to Trymon to solve the problem?

[rstofer]

What's the problem?  Amazon Prime delivers here every day!  I could have a Fluke 101 here later this afternoon if I order in the next 3 hours.  There are several other models that could be here tomorrow.

That's here in the US, I have no idea what it's like in Germany...

Don't know for Germany exactly. But an order from Amazon.com can take 15 days to get here in the Netherlands. But how about money? You act as if money can never be an issue. If you don't care about it why not paypal some of yours to Trymon to solve the problem?

That's why I picked an inexpensive model, the Fluke 101 sells for $47 (plus 10% sales tax) and can arrive today
https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-101-Multimeter-Equipment-Industrial/dp/B01IB9S6WK

In the next hour or so, same day delivery will disappear and it will be a 'Get It Tomorrow' item.

In any event, if I absolutely had to have a meter today, as unlikely as that seems, I would spend the money.  You need to look at the big picture.  When you're old and retired, perhaps immediacy is more important than money.  The time horizon is closing in...

[vk6zgo]

A student friend working at a truck repair shop here in Germany was told to fill new oil in to a big 10 Cylinder truck engine after an oil drain.

They had a supply hose with electric pump for the new oil. And he had the nozzle in the engine and waited until the engine was literally filled up to the top of the valve cover and had overfloated the engine.

He was surprised the engine did not start!

Years back, the Boss sent a Trainee to top up the oil in the station standby Diesel.
He seemed to have been gone a long time, so we checked, only to find him slowly & painfully "topping it up" through the dipstick hole.

At another place, the EPP diesel was situated in an underground bunker (a legacy of WW2).
Inside the bunker was what we called, for some reason "the top tank".

This was about the size of the oil heater tanks common in homes in some countries.

As it was relatively small, rather primitive provision was made for refilling, with a wooden ramp to roll 44gal (55 US, or 200l) drums up so the fuel could be poured down a tube into the tank.

One day, I went with a Trainee to do this,.
All went well for a while, then I asked him to check the gauge to see how full the tank was.
He came back to say it was about half full, so we continued, but after a while, I got a bit "antsy" & went to double check.

Fuel was pouring out of the top of the tank!

Diesel fuel was everywhere, including the floor ducts, so I spent most of the rest of the day with cleaning waste rags, sopping it up & wiping everything off.

The Trainee, of course, finished his shift & went home!

That experience has left me with an ongoing distaste for Diesel fuel.

[james_s]

Indeed. I once got a new car battery using my bike. I had a flat battery AND there was a power outage so I couldn't charge it. Only option was to get a new battery in order to get going in time for an appointment.

This is another thing I like about having a proper manual gearbox. I've had batteries go flat a couple of times and I just parked on a hill so I could get rolling downhill and let out the clutch to start it.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Indeed. I once got a new car battery using my bike. I had a flat battery AND there was a power outage so I couldn't charge it. Only option was to get a new battery in order to get going in time for an appointment.

This is another thing I like about having a proper manual gearbox. I've had batteries go flat a couple of times and I just parked on a hill so I could get rolling downhill and let out the clutch to start it.

Coming home from work a few years ago, I realised my car's alternator had died. Different things on the dash were turning off one by one yet the engine kept running. I figured most of the life of the battery was used up on the morning commute by using the headlights and I still had 90+ mins travel to get home. I didn't have any jumper leads but I did have a few spanners and a shifter.

I sat at a few consecutive sets of traffic lights pondering whether to pull over and wait an hour for road service guy to come out and tell my alternator is stuffed and would I like to be towed...   

I snap-decisioned and pulled into a service station and bought a new car battery, fitted it myself and got home on the new battery with no air conditioning and shock horror, no radio. 

Whilst this is indeed a mishap thread.. today I was soldering a wire for someone and using a cheap soldering iron with no cradle resting on a makeshift table cum bench, I turned away and the hot iron shifted and leant against the full roll of solder.  Now 4" long bits of solder come off the reel. 

edit: spelling

[bsfeechannel]

DIY oil change is another possibly stupid thing.  What if you kick the oil plug and can't find it?  You can't drive to your auto supply store, or anywhere else.

Drain the oil. Phone rings. Distracted. Come back to car. Fill engine with new oil. Why is it not showing on the dipstick yet? Why do my feet feel wet?

Yep. I wouldn't have thought it could happen. But it did.

Marry a woman that doesn't admit a single drop of oil on the floor, even in the garage, and you'll never get distracted again.