I ruined my Thermapen by leaving it in something inside the microwave. Got distracted, came back and hit start without thinking about it. If it wasn’t for the sparks I wouldn’t have remembered until it was done.
At work…
I was setting up a brand new Dell pentium computer. It was in a desktop case with USB ports along the front. (under the cd rom drive)
Very convenient for me to plug in my flash drive. I copied over some standard drivers and utilities to the new pc. Ran my installs and configured the desktop.
Totally forgot about my flash drive.
I needed to look at the connections on the back of the pc. Lifted up the back edge of the pc and heard a snap.
Broke my flash drive and the USB port. I had to order a replacement usb board from Dell. I was very thankfull they weren’t mounted directly on the motherboard.
I drove my car onto the beach. When it sank down to the frame, I got out and kicked the tire, breaking my big toe!
I’ve broken several thumb drives sticking to the front panel of desktop PCs. By kneeing them…At least the ports always survived, but it was back in the days when you almost always bricked a flash drive ejecting it while in the process of writing.
Other than that, I once was carrying a hodgepodge of computer hardware with both my hands, with a portable hard drive balancing on top, and of course it fell to the ground, on the asphalt at a parking lot. It was toast, as I immediately knew. Luckily it held no crucial data that wasn’t backed up.
That was my first experience with USB ports on the front of a pc.
I learned quickly to unplug flash drives before moving a pc.
When I was living and working overseas alone, I bought a new (to me) BMW 3 series. When the oil light came on I decided not to take it to the dealership (mostly because I struggled with the language) and I thought, how hard can it be to add oil?
So I did. Straight into the radiator.
That’s dumb enough (sorry!), but I was waiting for the story when your engine went up in smoke…
ETA: and by the way, I remember that the BMWs of old were guzzling up oil by the liter (called Ölfresser here). You could tell it by the blue smoke from their pipes. Riding behind a BMW of the late 70s/early 80s, you could always tell when the driver had just switched gears by the little blue puff of smoke from the exhaust.
Oh yeah, how could I have forgotten this story? A few years ago I was driving to the Bay Area, about 2 hours away from my home. While I was driving down the freeway I noticed the check engine light was on. But I figured it was probably not a big deal, and kept driving. Once I got off the freeway I noticed it was starting to run poorly at idle, but did I take it straight to a mechanic? No! I plans to see Hamilton, and I didn’t want to miss that! Besides, I didn’t want to deal with leaving the car at a shop so far away from home. So I went and had a fun time, and after the play I attempted to drive the car back home, and figured I’d deal with it after I got home. Well, I got about halfway home when it started losing power. So I took the next exit where it completely died on the off ramp.
So after getting it towed to a shop and taking a very expensive Uber ride home, what was wrong with my car? The coolant was all gone. I had been driving with no coolant and completely destroyed the engine. I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to buy myself a new Miata as a 40th birthday present to myself, but since I destroyed my old car it ended up being a 39th birthday present instead. I sold the old car to the mechanic for $200.
Ouch. And BMW rotors are not cheap.
My brain fade cost me $15,000. I drive a diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee, and so far I’ve been happy with it. It’s had some hiccups early on, but it is very dependable and now has 125,000 miles on it, and I plan to drive it until the wheels fall off.
Jeep, in their infinite wisdom, put the fillers for diesel fuel and for DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) next to each other. You do not want to put DEF into the fuel tank, but that’s exactly what I did. Worse. I turned on the ignition which primed the fuel pumps and drew DEF fluid into the injectors. I probably could have done a less expensive fix but I took it to the stealership and they replaced most of the fuel system parts. Yeah, $15,000 was the bill.
Self-inflicted stupidity. I hate them!
When I was a teenager I had a 70’s era Pioneer receiver. I don’t remember what model, but I remember that it had separate treble and bass controls for the left and right speakers. It developed a hiss in one of the channels and, being young, poor, and dumb decided to just junk it rather than try to get it diagnosed and fixed. I literally threw it in the dumpster and bought a cheap Magnavox boom box.
I wonder what it’d be worth today.
Right there I had a flashback to that scene in American Graffiti where the cop pulls out of the parking lot after having his axle tied to a lamp post, only to have the entire rear end yanked off.
Close enough.
I always feel like an idiot whenever I break a dish or glass.
It’s a minor thing but I try to take precautions. It still happens occasionally and nothing I try avoids it
The last time a crack decided to fail. Left me holding half in my hand and half on the floor.
I went through all my plates and threw out several that were cracked.
I had ripped a bunch of CDs decades ago when it was a long, slow, finicky, irritating process.
Last year I ripped a different multi-hundred CD collection using a modern PC and a modern external DVD/CD drive. It was a totally different experience. Try 2 clicks and 4 minutes per CD and no hiccups vs. much fiddling, 15 minutes, and lotsa hiccups back in Ye Olden Tymes.
I had dreaded and procrastinated on this task for a few years, but it turned out to be a non-event. Just keep feeding them in while Doping or Zooming or however we waste our days in front of our respective PCs. A few days later the task is done and your HD is only slightly more full.
If you haven’t ripped anything recently you might be surprised at how non-difficult it now is.
Well, yeah. How else are you going to lubricate the water pump?
I find it helpful to just accept that glass objects are going to break. Could be now, could be decades from now, but when it happens it’s an “meh” from me.
When I was about 10 years old, my family had an old tin coca cola bottle shaped thermometer. I guess I was curious on how fast the alcohol thermometer responded to heat, so I lit a match under the bulb. I can report that it reacts very fast, and that it will also break the glass, sending red colored alcohol everywhere. The evidence was buried quickly, and I never paid for my crime.
Thought of another. Many years ago I completely remodeled my kitchen. Everything. Floor, cabinets, counter top, even the kitchen sink.
The very last step was applying the thin, finished strip of material over the baseboard / toe-kick under the cabinets. It is applied with an adhesive.
Almost done. One more piece to place. Guess which side I applied the glue on?
I had to special-order the replacement piece. It took a couple months to arrive.
mmm
Yeah but that’s not really something that you broke by your own stupidity, is it?
Not that time. I misjudged a crack in the glaze. Didn’t realize it went into the ceramic. Could happen to anyone.
I do break at least a plate or glass every year. Hit it with my arm or don’t get a secure grip. Dumb stuff.
I’ve learned not to try and catch it. It’s smarter to just back away.
It’s me going into autopilot. I’m focused on something and reach for a coffee cup without looking. The crash gets my attention. 
This wasn’t me but my dad.
It was several years ago. I was at my first job out of college and living in a shithole apartment with my fiance (now husband). I was having a really rough time so my parents came with my little brother to visit me. We decided to go to the natural history museum nearby because my parents love museums and it was something we did a lot when I was a kid. Well, it turned out that the museum sucked. There wasn’t a coherent theme and it wasn’t even organized in a way that made sense. It was in Illinois so they spent a lot of time talking about Abraham Lincoln… which was really weird in between talking about ice ages and dinosaurs. We ended up going through the museum really fast and needed to kill a little bit of time before we could go to eat. There was a gift shop attached to the museum so we went in there. It was just us there, my mom and dad, my brother, my fiance and me. And this gift shop was filled to the brim with glass art. There were light bulbs melted in artful ways. There were weird abstract glass shapes. There were vases of all shape and colors. Everything was breakable. So, of course, we are all touching stuff. Except my dad. My dad is being sensible and just pointing. He goes to point out a particularly weird glass art thing where like a ship was put inside a melting light bulb. And as he points, the edge of his sleeve barely brushed against another piece of particularly ugly glass art and knocks it over. I immediately right it. And we would have been fine if we had just left but, my dad, being the honest man he is, immediately exclaims “Oh! I broke it!” The clerk chimes in and says that we can buy it at wholesale price, just $90 instead of $180. My parents pay for it begrudgingly and we left. We all decided that the whole experience was terrible.
Yes, that was the inevitable ending, but it did take a few weeks,
Just the other day, an irrigation head when I was trying to make a flagstone walkway. I thought I was prying up a root with my shovel, you see…
The worst I ever did:
I had a '63 Studebaker Lark with the 259 two-barrel V8. The carb was a bit wonky and occasionally had to be tweaked a bit. I pulled into a parking lot to adjust the idle screw one afternoon, and instead of replacing the aftermarket air cleaner, I just plopped it on the seat. When I got home, there was a definite knock in the engine. It was from a nut that fell into the carb- it was on the bolt someone had installed to hold the air cleaner down.
I pulled the plugs and found a broken one. I pulled the head and found a broken piston in that cylinder. Oh, well…
Both heads go to the machine shop to be redone (about $100). New old stock piston ($30, IRRC), rings ($12), and head gaskets ($20) finished the engine. Took the opportunity to get dual exhausts (4-foot long glasspacks) for about $80. I got a carb kit from NAPA that solved the carburetor problems.
If the costs seem low, this was in 1990.