What the hell did you just do, you moron?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

For the record, the other cell phone immersion was in a wet bag at the gym. The phone went into the bag while she was swimming. After she was done (a) swimming and (b) remembering that her phone was in the bag, she put her swim goggles and locker key in the bag and took the whole bag into the shower with her.

For my own contribution, I’ll offer up the time a while back I was at a post office and had to use some tape on a package. The person at the desk told me to be careful because the tape dispenser had a really sharp edge. “Look, dude,” I thought to myself, “I’m pretty sure I can manage to get myself a piece of tape without injuring my- OW! SHIT SHIT SHIT!”

42

Chefguy, I hate to tell you this, but your wife is a transexual. I should know, because when she was a guy, he was my roommate. Hey, say hi to Mike for me.

Actually, it was two roommates. They had one recipe for everything:

  1. Put food in pan

  2. Put pan on stove

  3. Turn gas on high

  4. Nap time

They pretty much ruined every pot and pan that I had.

43

Just last night, I thought I’d fry some pierogis for dinner. Unfortunately, I’d let the pan get too hot, and I burned them. Took them out, turned the heat down a bit, and put in more oil to do another batch. After a moment, I picked up the pan to swirl the oil around. Because the pan was so hot, the oil had already heated - not to cooking temperature, fortunately, but enough to thin it. I gracefully splashed it right out of the pan and onto my bare foot.

44

My roomate had that same recipe! Was your other guy named Kendrick, by any chance?

45

I worked and roomed with a crew overseas. We all took turns cooking. When it came time for Martinez to cook, he told us sheepishly that he only knew how to make grilled cheese sandwiches. We said: hey, bring 'em on, man.

A bit later, I looked up to see smoke rolling out of the kitchen, accompanied by an unholy stink. I walked in to find Martinez making his sandwiches: all four burners were glowing cherry red, three of which had sandwiches burning merrily directly on the burners, and he was preparing to plop the fourth one on.

46

Even after having had my car stolen almost two years ago (I got it back), I still sometimes get in a hurry and forget to lock my car/set my alarm.

:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:

I had two pieces of electronic equipment that weren’t communicating properly with each other. SO I grab a serial cable, plug one of them into my computer, open and configure HyperTerminal, and commence to seeing what I can see.

Which is absolutely nothing.

After an hour, I’m pulling my hair trying to figure out why in the hell I can’t establish comms. to anything, when my coworker checks my settings and sees I’m configured for COM3, not COM1.

:smack:

47

No, Pierre. That explains his poor cooking skills. He was French – wait for it – Canadian.

I had never heard of Alton Brown until one Sunday, when Food Network was doing a Good Eats marathon. I was fascinated and watched it all day long. The more I watched, the hungrier I got. During each episode I’d tell myself that that was what I was making for dinner that night. I finally settled on the trout. I can still remember the recipe to this day.

  1. The kitchen will get awfully hot, especially since it’s mid summer. Take off shirt.

  2. Dredge the fish in flour. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat some butter and olive oil in a frying pan.

  4. Carefully lower the fish into the pan. The oil is really hot, so take care.

  5. Give the pan a shake for ten seconds, so that the fish forms a crust.

  6. Let it fry for two minutes.

  7. Turn it over. Make sure you… Wait, what was it that Alton said? I remember it was really important. Something about… when you turn it over, make sure you turn it awaOH MOTHERFUCKER HOT OIL DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT THAT’S GOING TO LEAVE A SCAR!

48

Similarly, orange juice is not water, and should never be used to make coffee. That was a pain in the ass to clean up.

49

I was just today relecting on my slowness to pick up on a certain socializing/logistics pattern to meeting up with my best gal at our social club. Just because she is neither seated in the dining area nor standing near the club entrance, doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t come in at all, or that she is in a private meeting with one of the staff.

You see, there is a large area designated for smoking, with benches and tables with chairs, which is within the main rectangle of the building, but open-aired. She doesn’t smoke, but neither do a lot of folks who stand around or sit around in this area.

Now, I could easily excuse myself for missing this possibility a while back, especially since she is not a smoker. That would have been at least two weeks ago. But today must be the third time, if not more, that it “hit” me. :dubious:

She hadn’t come in at all yesterday, against her usual pattern. So, putting the “two” together, I was actually planning to call her at home tonight. I thought today, “That’s it! She’s got to be sick. I have to call her to find out how she is.”

Then I saw her with a friend near a door to the smoking area. :smack: :o

I thought then, "That’s it! I’ve got to remember this possibility.

Now, I know I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but SHEEESH! What’s next? The need to write notes to myself for reminders of earlier simple observations? :o

I suppose the embarrassment comes from reflecting on my high aptitude and considerable education, including mathematics and information technology. People mostly think that I’m very, very smart, even if they disagree with me a lot. Or have noticed that I’m also quite… maaaaad.

[Jerry Seinfed voice]

People think he’s smart… but he’s not smart.

[/voice]

50

We need a big dose of the film “Defending your life.” Here’s a good segment.

Especially starting at about 8:00

51

I made a single-character typo in a backup program that made it silently fail (at least, it didn’t change the setup portions of the log I skim to see if it’s done).

A month later, the main file server drops two drives out of its four-drive RAID5 in a freak occorence…

52

And if you use powdered sugar instead of flour the pancakes won’t come out right, no matter how long you cook them.

53

OMFOg! Are we married to the same woman? My wife did pretty much the same thing with one of her fancy pans with the heat-o-meter thing in the lid handle. Well, she boiled the pan dry, and the thermometer sunk deep into the now Dali-esque handle.

One time she was cooking some crock-pot chicken using a recipe that called for a can of beer. She used a can of Coors Light. Certainly not my first choice. However, when it looked like the liquid was evaporating away, and lacking another can of Coors, she poured in a can of diet coke. “They’re both carbonated, aren’t they?” <shaking of head> We didn’t eat the chicken.

54

I once used my electric smoker to smoke an expensive piece of Prime Brisket for Christmas. The smoker operated via a large heating element sitting on a shallow bed of gravel. Wet pieces of wood placed next to the heating element made the smoke while a large pan of water above the coil kept the meat moist via steam.

When I took the meat out and set it on a serving platter it smelled funny. Soon the “aroma” made all of us decide that it was no good. I cut a piece off, cooled it, and offered it to the dog. Even he didn’t want it.

I discovered weeks later that it wasn’t the meat that was bad. It was the cooker.

I found out that my dog had grown lazy and been peeing on the nice large “fire hydrant” looking smoker instead of walking off the deck onto the lawn.

The pee would run down the side of the smoker and into the shallow gravel pit. So when I had set up my smoker with fresh wood, water pan etc on that very chilly day the reservoir of dog pee just below the top of the gravel was not noticeable. After the element heated up it pretty much steamed up a bunch of doggy wiz.

As I threw out the smoker into the trash I had to give the dog credit. As much as he was a meat loving chow hound his standards were far above eating meat that was steamed in his own pee.

55

In the last year and a bit, I have left my keys in the door to my house. Very embarrassing, as it’s twice been the same flatmate come home later than me and discover them. The third time was Christmas day, when I was running all over my house as the taxi taking me to my friends house for an expat dinner was outside and I could not find my keys. Eventually the driver knocked on the door. I opened it, about to explain that could he just wait five more minutes when I saw my keys in his hands. I think he thought I was going out for Christmas dinner as I wasn’t allowed to be in the house on my own…

56

:eek: Wow. I guess she didn’t quite get the concept.

This is turning into quite the kitchen thread. The thing I found funny was when my friend would call her son at home to get something going in the kitchen. She couldn’t just say “Boil some water for pasta.” She’d have to say “Go into the kitchen. Go to the cabinet below the toaster oven. Open it. Grab the big orange pot. Pull it out. Close the cabinet door. Bring the pot over to the sink…” If she was not very specific about every single step of the procedure, there was no telling what she’d find when she got home.

57

Here’s one that I do pretty frequently. I have a mulching mower but sometimes if the grass is damp or I’ve let the grass get too long, it will stick to the underside of the mower and start clumping up. So when I’m done mowing, or before the next time I start, I’ll flip the mower over on it’s side so I can clean out the stuck-on grass underneath. And when I do this, I’m always careful to pull the cap off the spark plug so the mower doesn’t fire up on me while I’m moving the blade around.

The only problem is that I always forget to put the damned cap back on the spark plug. So when I go to start it up the next time, I spend about ten minutes yanking away on the cord and can’t figure out why the mower won’t start. Until I finally remember… :smack:

58

Supposedly, Weight Watchers used to offer a recipe for “coq au cola” made with diet cola as a low-calorie alternative to coq au vin.

59

1)When I was 17 my stepfather got me a job at a garage despite the fact that I knew nothing about cars, tools or else of that nature. “It’s okay” he figured, “Zeke’ll just be a gopher anyway.”

One of my jobs was to clean the sparkplugs in this boxy-sort of thing that got attached to an airhose. Put plug in hole, turn on machine, wiggle plug and presto it was clean.

One day I got to wondering how this magical device cleaned the spark plugs, so I pulled out the cleaner, attached the airhose, put my eye directly over the sparkplug hole, turned on the machine and promptly sandblasted my left eye.

2)Mrs Zeke and I, unlike Clinton, inhale. Sadly we had nothing to inhale - and hadn’t for a while - so I decided I’d take some rubbing alcohol and clean some of our utensils. I poured in WAAAAAAY to much iso (about 200ml as opposed to the more traditional capful or two. Since that would take way too long to evaporate I decided to speed up the process in the oven.

But I’m not stupid! I checked the internet for iso’s flash-point first so that I’d be sure not to blow shit up. The first and only site that came up on Google said the flash point was 12C and boiling point was 399C - I didn’t actualy go to the site because I now had what I needed to know - though it seemed odd that it ignites at 12C and boils almost 400C later.

Armed and secure with my internettly knowledge I made a tinfoil tray and put it onto a cookie sheet and popped her in the oven. Turned the oven on to 200F and went to watch tv for 5 minutes or so. About when I figured I should check on it Mrs. Zeke andI heard a metallic ping. We go into the kitchen to discover a goodly sized fire in the oven. After it went out we (meanning I) reasonned that the cookie sheet buckled some and spilled iso onto the element (even though the hot one was up top). The cookie sheet is up to temp now so it should be fine. Close oven door. Go back to TV

Turns out that heating iso causes really flammable vapours and they get concentrated in a confined space. Had I known that (I knew that) I wouldn’t have been near as shocked when I heard the loud "WHUUUUMPF and saw flames gouting out of the now half-open oven door. I decided that was enough of that - cuz eym knot dum. Turned off oven, watched flames die and left well enough alone.

A couple of minutes later Mrs. Zeke thought that for safety sake she’d check to make sure fire #3 wasn’t in progress. So she went into the kitchen, put her face down by the door, openned it (cuz lloking thru teh windoe knot werk gud) and inhaled a noseful of hot iso fumes.

We did this straight and sober. Imagine our talents when wrecked.

60

You got your numbers and definitions mixed up here. The numbers are:

12C-Flash point
82.1C- Boiling Point
399C- Autoignition temperature

Flash point- Temperature where enough gas is given off from the liquid for it to burn. In other words, <12C means no fire no matter what.

Boiling Point- Temperature where the liquid starts to turn to vapor.

Autoigniton temperature- The temperature the vapor needs to ignite without a spark or flame.

Basically, you started boiling off the alcohol. The vapors then reached the heating coils which are 400C+ and ignited. You then :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: did it again which caused the 2nd whuumpf.