Classic Brain Farts

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been working out of the country a lot of this year. This means that I spend a few weeks away, then get a week back home. On this most recent trip I found that my car, a Mini Cooper S, would not start. Sunday I pushed the car out of the garage and tried to jump start it with my wife’s car, but no luck. Looking around the engine compartment, I couldn’t find the battery. Looked in the manual, and sure enough (now I remember), they put the batter in the trunk, under the mats, which is why Mini Cooper S’s don’t have a spare tire (run flats instead). Has something to do with cramming all of that engine into the front compartment.

I pull the battery, take it to the parts store and they test it. Guy tells me the battery needs to be replaced. Only 3 amps left out of what should be 480. Ouch. Unfortunately they don’t have the battery, and it will take him 3 days to get it. I decide I’ll call around on Monday when more places are open, and sure enough find one nearby.

As background, after the car wouldn’t start on Sunday, we had to push it back into the garage, this time nose out. I had rolled down the windows of the car, then out of habit locked the car with my remote. Then I closed the back. Not sure why.

This morning I go out to put the battery in - it’s hotter than Hades here right now, especially with me acclimated to cooler climes - so morning is best for physical stuff. I go to open the back - no go. It’s not shut tightly, but just enough where the latch caught. Of course the doors won’t open either - there is now no battery in the car to “click” open the car. Mrs Shibb climbs in through the open window, and the back seats fold down to give access to the trunk, but not from the inside. There is a keyhole for the driver’s side door, but none for the hatchback. There is no pass through or anything of that sort. So no way to get into the rear compartment without the battery, and no way to unlock it with the battery.

:smack:

There was really no reason to lock my car while it was in the garage, or even to shut the rear gate. Just one of those things where your mind is on autopilot. What in the hell was I thinking?

So, anyone have a comparable (or even more embarrassing) “brain fart” story?

Epilogue: fortunately the BMW folks have engineered around this. Looking in the manual we learn that there is a hidden trunk latch under the back seats. Just takes a bit of strength to pop them and get them out. Would have been pretty screwed if I hadn’t lowered the windows, though. As it was there was definitely a moment of good panic.

2

I just got through looking at my office caller ID, and returned a call to my friendly office manager, with whom I’ve been working on a personnel issue. While I was going through the greetings with her on the phone, I glanced from the phone to my calendar, and realized she called yesterday, not today.

I told her that I would be having a blonde moment, if I had hair.

3

Saturday I came home to find the front yard was half-mowed. The roommate left me a message “if you get more gas and oil, I’ll finish the lawn in the AM”

I just have a little 6.5 HP walk-behind mower. Nothing fancy. Last summer I got it all cleaned up, new blade, changed filter and spark plug. Hunky-dory. I only used it twice last summer, too (long story) so it’s still in good condition. We used it for the first time last week with no problems.

So I am dead tired but I get gas and oil, and come back to the mower. Go to put gas in - it’s nearly full. Check the oil and it’s kinda low. So I add more. Only the new oil is clear and I can’t read it on the dipstick. Try to start, no go.

I check the oil again. Now it’s mixed with the old and I can read it clearly on the dipstick. Too much oil! Drat! I drain some until it’s at the right level. Try to start, no go.

Check the air filter. Clean as a whistle still (once I blow out a coupla pieces of grass).

Nearly asleep and quite frustrated at this point, I break down and go borrow my neighbor’s. His isn’t quite as powerful as mine. Not looking forward to doing the entire back with this thing. But I do get the front finished.

Try my mower one more time. Still no go. I run over to my dad’s so I can pick something up, and tell him the curious story of my stupid mower. He suggests the spark plug. I say “no way, I changed it last year. Can’t be bad.” He wants to come look at it. I want to go to bed.

He comes over. He gives it a pull. No start. I say “welp, I guess I’ll pull the spark plug and look for a crack…”

The spark plug wire is completely disconnected, hanging off the front of the machine. I coulda tripped over it if it were longer. Spark plug is sitting there naked, plain as day. Right inbetween the gas and oil that I checked 10 times. Right next to the air filter that I checked.

I was so pissed at myself. More than an hour of work for something I coulda fixed in 10 seconds had I not had a giant brain fart.

Plus, being a good neighbor, I had to completely clean out the deck of my neighbor’s mower before I returned it. So that took more time. Yeesh!

4

ZipperJJ, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that. I have a mulching mower and whenever the grass is wet or a little too tall, it clogs up underneath, so when the next time to mow comes around, I unplug the spark plug, turn it on it’s side, scrape out all the caked on grass, flip it over, try to start it, and it takes me about a dozen yanks before I remember that I haven’t reconnected the spark plug wire.

In my defense, the spark plug is on the front, so I can’t see it when I’m standing behind yanking away, but still… :smack:

5

On a similar note, I’ll testify to the fact that one feels really, really dumb while SCUBA diving when one realizes, submerged 3-4 meters already and starting to suck on just a tiny bit of air to keep going down with empty lungs, that one forgot to open the cylinder’s valve before strapping it on and jumping overboard.

For the fourth time this week.

Cue frantic, panicky kicks to cork back to the surface… and a few rounds of drinks on one after the dive.

6

This week, faced with a laptop with a Windows install that was so gibbled that there was no longer any support for CD-ROM drives, I invested a bunch of time in an elaborate scheme to partition its hard drive to create a logical drive with an image of the Windows install disc on it.

You know, so I could boot from that drive, format C:, and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows on it. Because the internal DVD-RAM drive didn’t work, and externals wouldn’t work with it, either.

I created an .iso of the disc on another machine, transferred it to an external HDD, defragged the gibbled laptop’s HDD, set up the new logical drive, extracted the .iso to the root of the new logical drive, went into the BIOS settings to specify the new logical drive as the preferred boot device…

…and then (the better part of an evening later) realized that if the BIOS wasn’t seeing the DVD-RAM drive, there was no point in re-installing Windows. A microsecond later, I realized that (of course) I was able to boot from the frigging CD the entire time. I felt a bit of an ass.

7

Mine also involves and English car.

I had owned my MG for about ten years. I don’t think I’d ever replaced either headlight at that point. I was out somewhere for dinner. When I was done, I got in the car, started it up, and turned on the headlights. They both burned out at the same time. (Maybe I timed it just wrong and there was a power spike from the alternator spinning up; or maybe it was the ghost of Lucas.)

It was well past dusk. What the hell was I gonna do with no headlights? I figured I didn’t have any choice but to turn on my emergency flashers, drive slow, and take major streets that I knew would be well-lit. It was only about five miles to get home. I made it safely, no worries.

The next morning, I drove to work. Just as I was about to get out of the car I thought “hmm, I wonder if the high beams work.”

8

When I was taking SCUBA lessons the instructor turned our air off in the deep end of the pool so we would know what it felt like, and to know how to not panic and get to our dive buddy. Still, it was a very strange feeling to want to take a breath but not being able to. We also had it drilled into us that in no uncertain terms were we to get in the water without first testing all the gear by inflating the BC and making sure air came out of the reg. And then we had to let our partner check it as well.

I wish I could remember my brain farts. I have memories of feeling stupid about them, but the details escape me. Hmm, there was the time I’d had the hood open on my car and I didn’t close it properly, and it flew up into the windshield later as I drove down the freeway…I didn’t feel stupid about that, though, just fortunate that the road was deserted so I could pull over right away without dodging high speed traffic, and I actually laughed as hard as my co-workers when they saw the hood of my car the next day. It wasn’t pretty. I had to get a new one.

9

A friend of mine got pulled over in Florida. Cop saunters up to the car, looking like Doogie Houser. She didn’t even think he had to shave yet! “Good afternoon, ma’am. Do you know how fast you were going?” She replied “Yes, 45 MPH.” He nodded and said “And do you know the speed limit here?” She thought for a second and said “Yes, it’s 45!” He shook his head, but she was adamant. He got on the radio and asked another cop what the speed limit was on that part of the road, and the other cop said “45 MPH!”

Doogie walked up, gave her license back, apologized and muttered something about being new in that city and went REALLY quickly back to his car.

Oops!!

10

About a month ago I stopped by the grocery store on the way home from work. I parked and turned off the engine but I didn’t turn the key ALL the way back only part way. It was enough to turn off the engine but not release the key. Then I tried to put the car in park, I have a truck with the shifter handle attached to the steering wheel column, but it wouldn’t let me. “Hmmm that’s odd.” I thought, and tried again but it would not move. Then I tried to take the key out but it wouldn’t let me take the key out.

At this point I started to panic a little and got out of the truck and paced a bit thinking of what to do. So I thought if I could get the truck to start then at least I could get it home. I got back in the truck and started it up. “Thank God” I sighed.

I drove home and parked and this time, without even thinking, I turned the key completely back and put it into park. Two seconds later I realized what had happened at the store. :smack: