# I are a moran **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 26, 2009, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865 "2009-03-26T13:30:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/21 "2009-03-26T16:03:59Z")
Last night, thinking I’d shave a little off my leaving the house time this morning, I shaved before going to bed. (Get it, shaved?) This morning, I woke up, showered, dried off and started to shave. ---
**Author:** ![Foxy40](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Foxy40](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foxy40)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/22 "2009-03-26T16:05:18Z")
> [@Neverender](#): > > What about the wet tea towel/dish cloth method? > > Seeing as I live in student accommodation, I have a fire blanket in the kitchen. > > My stupid thing? Forgetting the word ‘colander’ and calling it a coriander. My girlfriend found it highly amusing. Speaking of colander, I once dumped an entire pot of cooked pasta down the garbage disposal not noticing I didn’t put the colander in the sink yet. ---
**Author:** ![Mahna\_Mahna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/23 "2009-03-26T16:18:28Z")
Be comforted in the fact that you’re not alone, **Khadaji**. I’m sure your nice helper has had it happen many many times before. 🙂 I had a similar problem back in my call centre days when customers would call to activate new cell phones, but would use their cells instead of a landline. This being pre-GSM, the system was designed in such a way that you could only load a single active phone per cell number… so as soon as the serial number for the new phone was entered into the system, the old one would stop working and the call would drop. It got consistent enough that I started asking callers they were on their cell before completing the switch… that helped out some, except for the occasional dumbass who thought it would be smart to lie to me. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Sundrop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@Sundrop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sundrop)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/24 "2009-03-26T16:40:46Z")
Some time back I was doing the dishes, by which I mean I was going to run the dishwasher. I grabbed the washin’ powders and filled up the main reservoir, but did not have enough for the secondary one. So what did I do? Did I just run it anyway? No, I thought, “Hmm. THere’s some dishwashing soap right here. That should fill it up nicely.” Let’s just say that my kitchen floor has never been quite so clean as it was after that little event. The other was yesterday. I was working on a finance problem in Crystal Ball. It involved determining several NPVs of different series of cash flows. I had setup cells with the payments, and made those payments negative numbers so that the NPV function could just add them in. Another part of the finance problem involved taking those NPVs and multiplying them by a percentage, totalling them up and forcing that value to be equal to the value in yet another cell in the spreadsheet. That number was positive. I would try to run the simulation and get an error that the constraints couldn’t all be met. I spent four hours working over that simulation trying to figure out what was wrong, blitheley ignoring the fact that a several negative numbers times various positive percentages cannot ever equal a positive number, and thus my error. Once I noticed that, changed the negative numbers to positive ones, adjusted the NPV formula to subtract instead of add, the simulation worked smoothly. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/25 "2009-03-26T16:42:45Z")
Are you one of the Listowel Morans? ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/26 "2009-03-26T17:16:17Z")
> [@Foxy40](#): > > Speaking of colander, I once dumped an entire pot of cooked pasta down the garbage disposal not noticing I didn’t put the colander in the sink yet. I once spent about 8 hours making stock. It was an all day affair. I finally got it to the point where I could strain out the solids. I did. The solids stayed in the colander. The stock went down the sink. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/27 "2009-03-26T17:42:18Z")
This was a while back. I was in a meeting, describing something to my boss. It went something like this: “And then you select the Build item out of the Compile… um, you know, the thing that hangs down from the top of the screen…” See, I had forgotten the name of that UI feature _in English_. I knew what it was in Esperanto and French, but that wouldn’t do, because I wasn’t speaking Esperanto or French, so I locked those parts of my mind away. The word in Esperanto, _menuo_, and the word in French, _menu_, might as well be the word in English. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/28 "2009-03-26T17:50:56Z")
Loving the thread. I just want you to know, **Khadaji** , that you have given me a new word to add to the collection of things like Car Mash for Car Wash, in that whenever I need to use the word “moron” it will doubtless come out “moran.” This is useful because I used to work with a woman with the last name of Moran and she was one. In fact, the other guys would refer to her as Ms. Moron. Dumb as a box of jaw breakers. ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/29 "2009-03-26T17:52:50Z")
I was at a mall this past weekend and and stopped to look in a Swarovski crystal shop. They had some pretty crystal jewelry in the front display case…which, I realized as my forehead hit it, was made of glass. (it was really clean glass, though) On the plus side, I amused my boyfriend and his brother greatly by this. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/30 "2009-03-26T18:31:04Z")
> [@Eureka](#): > > On the forgotten–or merely misused–word front–Bell choir director said she just wanted the left hand to play for a few measures. She meant the Bass Clef–which is the Pianist’s left hand, but the bells are distributed such that if people ring the bells in their left hands only, one might get interesting effects but not the one she was looking for. Heh. I had a tap teacher who used to say “do such and such with your left foot” – we would – and she’d inevitably respond “your _other_ left foot” (meaning, of course, right). ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/31 "2009-03-26T18:39:01Z")
This was actually a couple years ago, I’ve been depressingly lacking in the TOTAL stupidity department so I’ll use it: My mom got a new oven and being the kind, loving son that I am (who always wanted to use the clean feature on an oven) decided that after she went out I would clean it because it had to be done before it could be used according to the guys who installed it. So I turn on the clean and about 30 minutes later it starts smoking. Now for whatever reason I just think maybe it’s some coating on the oven rack they used to make it look pretty that was burning off, about an hour after that my eyes are watering on the other side of the house, that’s a LOT of coating, so I open all the windows turn on the fan and move some extra fans into the kitchen to localize and disperse the smoke a bit. So my mom is about to come home she calls and I tell her I was nice and cleaned the oven for her like she wanted… She asked if I’d removed the cardboard and manuals… :smack: On the bright side I now know my oven works as a perfect crematorium for legally questionable documents if I ever need to dispose of something like that quickly! ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/32 "2009-03-26T18:55:58Z")
> [@Eureka](#): > > I put a pot of something on the stove, turned the heat up high, and ignored it for twenty minutes or so–long enough for my pot of something to burn severely onto the bottom of the pot. > > I won’t leave food untended for a while. I did this the other day, put on water to boil for pasta and left it going so long that it ruined my pan. To my credit, I didn’t just get distracted, I was stuck in another room thanks to a bit of gastric distress. But I felt pretty awful when I came out and my kitchen was smoky and my pan smelled like hell. I think that this may hasten my switchover from non-stick to all-stainless cookware, though, since the stench lingered long enough to give me a headache and made me wonder what I’ve been putting in my food. ---
**Author:** ![TastesLikeBurning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@TastesLikeBurning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TastesLikeBurning)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/33 "2009-03-26T19:17:02Z")
> [@Solfy](#): > > I quenched a butyl lithium reaction too fast and blew a plume of chemicals eight feet into the air of my fume hood. It looked like the Mentos/Coke combo, only in green and yellow. > What an unholy mess. ☹ I hate it when that happens. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/34 "2009-03-26T19:19:55Z")
I am usually the first one into the office in the morning and I brew a pot of coffee. The coffee maker is plumbed, rendering it \*mostly \*idiot-proof: put a filter in the filter-holder-thingy, add the contents of a foil puch of coffee grounds, slide it back in, push the button, and in about 5 minutes, there be a nice fresh pot of coffee there. So this past Monday morning, I walked over to the sink with the coffee pot (the sink is across the room from the coffee maker), gave it a nice good rinsing and a quick towel-dry, and meandered on back to the coffee maker to discover that I had just performed all of the above steps _without the pot in place!_:smack: Hot coffee was all over the countertop and flowing onto the floor. Took me 10 minutes and an entire package of napkins to clean it up. (Nobody else saw this, however, so I suppose it never really happened.) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/35 "2009-03-26T19:30:05Z")
> [@Wheeljack](#): > > That’s how you adjust them if you don’t want to drive them out to town. Unless you’re stupid, in which case it’s how you ruin them and have to buy another pair. FYI, it’s much easier (and much less likely to destroy your glasses) to use a hairdryer. That’s what us pros do (although we have purpose built hairdryers). ---
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f08c70/32.png) [@Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Brother_Walker)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/36 "2009-03-26T19:44:40Z")
hee-hee… Reading all these posts, I have to recall how many people laugh at me for toting around a 5 lb ABC rated fire extinguisher every time I move from house to house. Several years ago, I lived with a roommate in a 200 year old home in the historic district. The only source of heat was a pot-belly stove on the street level. One day, I had just popped out of the shower and was greeted by screams and panic of my female roomie downstairs. Seems like ‘something had gone wrong’ and the fire from the potbelly stove was ‘escaping’. Though it did take a while to get all the foam and soot mopped out of the kitchen, she never laughed about my fire extinguisher again. The local fire department recharged it for free because I had been able to prevent the historic house any further damage. Hey, I’ll take any bonus points I can get. The always be prepared Boy Scout 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Audrey\_Levins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Audrey\_Levins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Audrey_Levins)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/37 "2009-03-26T20:00:30Z")
I bartend, and we have these little frozen shot glasses that tend to chip on the top; sometimes the chip is so small it’s difficult to see. So in the efforts of saving myself time, I decided to spin the top of the shot glass against my palm “to see if it was chipped.” Why yes, Audrey, that shot glass IS chipped. And now you have a perfectly circular bleeding slice on your palm. I tend to turn a bit red when others (my coworkers) tell this story, because it’s so incredibly, remarkably stupid. And until it healed, rather remarkably painful as well… ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/38 "2009-03-26T20:45:53Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#): > > I forgot the word “refrigerator”. I was trying to tell my wife that I put the leftovers in the refrigerator, but the word just decided to take a vacation from my brain. > > I wound up describing it as “that cold kitchen thing…you know, the opposite of a stove”. I once forgot the word “orange.” By that I mean the fruit, not the color. I know the distinction because I **used the color name when trying to describe the object**. :smack: > [@Snickers](#): > > (Curiously, they also do when I have a migraine. I didn’t know that until the last migraine, trying to have a conversation with my husband, and failing miserably). Same here, I had one Monday and was trying to talk with my husband. I had some serious lag in trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say and then getting the words to come out. ---
**Author:** ![mauxlicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mauxlicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mauxlicious)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/39 "2009-03-26T21:06:26Z")
A little while back I was at the gym working out, pretty early in the morning. After I lifted weights and sat in the sauna for a little bit I decided that I had time for a quick swim in the pool before I had to go. Being a good boy and because I was all sweaty and nasty I took a nude soapy shower (like the sign says state law requires you to) and walked out to the pool area to hop in. Being early, there was only one woman in the pool who was swimming laps. She happened to be statring directly at me with a mildly shocked expression on her face. That’s when I realized that I was carrying my swimsuit in my hand, like I would my towel, and I was standing there, very publicly, naked. :smack::eek: ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865/40 "2009-03-26T22:09:46Z")
I have more than once gotten up early in the morning, put a bunch of stuff in the crock pot to cook for the whole day, and not turned it on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-are-a-moran/490865.md?page=3)