I Should Have A Darwin Award!

We have threads to discuss our mental health, threads to highlight the books, music and films we love and a thread to give ourselves a little pat on the back when we did good. Let THIS thread serve as the opposite of that last one. I’ll start. Feel free to be ruthless in your ridicule. Where the mental health thread is supportive and judgement free, here is where we can come for the ***-kicking we deserve. (Don’t leave a guy hanging. Fess up!) Here goes mine:

Yesterday I noticed that the little light under the microwave that hangs over the stove was inoperative. We usually keep it on at night as a nightlight. When I mentioned this to my wife she said that the 2nd light in the unit had been inoperative for months. I attempted to unscrew the bulb but it was so old and brittle from being exposed to heat, grease and abuse that the bulb twisted out from its screw-on cylinder, the two halves now connected by just two thin wires. Hmmm. I opened the little door to the other light. Same result: bulb separated from the cylinder. Instant “Challenge Accepted!” I didn’t give it a beat. I am a man. This is a microwave. A dark kitchen is proof of my ineptitude and must not be allowed to endure. Did I unplug the unit? NO! I just pushed the button for the light to indicate “Off”. I then grabbed the first tool I could find, a steak knife! I inserted the knife into the cylinder, pushing hard to create the needed friction to grip it and turned counterclockwise. After two turns, POW! Sparks! The knife grounded when it contacted the metal frame of the little door for the light. My wife screamed from the living room, “Eric, what happened?” “I’m OK. Just stupid. Oh, and I destroyed a steak knife.” And seeing that the microwave was now dark, “Maybe I destroyed the microwave too.” “Well, you’re alive!”, she said.

I unplugged the unit and checked the breaker panel in the basement. The panel was new. I had the house electrical system updated in preparation for a separate service with an EV charger. Aha! The breaker was popped. I tried what worked on the old panel: push from OFF to ON. No joy. It refused to stay in the ON position. Clearly I must have damaged the GFI outlet. Normally: “I can fix this!” But given my experience with the knife and failure to unplug, my confidence was blown. I called my electrician with zero sense of added shame. The next day, today, fifteen minutes ago in fact, they arrived. I’m a sharer. I am basically the human opposite of our president. If I do something stupid, I tell the world. (A fact made obvious by this thread). So I told it all to those guys. There was no, “Yeah, it happens”. No “Dude I’ve been there!” Just four eyes saying what I already knew: “Buddy, you should probably stay away from machinery and sharp objects!”

Time to show that I do possess some mechanical aptitude. “So I think I may have fried the outlet and that’s why the breaker won’t reset.” Both guys looked at each other then said “doubtful”. Followed by, “You did cycle the breaker to OFF then back to ON, right?” They DO THAT? My old breakers didn’t do that! They… as I was explaining, the 2nd guy pulled the breaker left then right to ON. What can I say? There is no recovering from demonstrating such stupidity. When we got back to the kitchen the lead electrician asked, “Do you want us to replace the bulbs?” “You have them?”, I asked. “No, but we can go get them.” They figured me out. Two professionals have concluded that I can no longer be trusted to replace a lightbulb.

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I am deploying a Kubernetes cluster at home for self-hosting. Games, decentralised social media, maybe even a semi-decent Discord alternative that doesn’t slurp all your data. (DM me with tips and experiences)

Was following a guide for setting it up for GitOps (basically the supernerdy complex version of automatic updates, backups and changelogs all in one). As I was filling out the specs of my configuration into an example file, I got to something like this.

For those who are still sane: # means: the rest of this line is a comment, will not be read by the computer and is only intended for humans.
So in this case, only disk: "" is the (placeholder) code, the rest is instructional comment.

# [REQUIRED] Disk to install onto
disk: ""   # To view available disks, run: `some-command -n <machines-ip> get disks --insecure`

And I just asked: how do I list the available disks.
Got an instant reply from the creator. Then saw the comment on that same line. Oof.

Not Darwin award, but pretty stupid nonetheless.

damn it steve jobs GIF by South Park

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I cannot overstate I much I respect you for writing that- I swear I will add my Darwin Awards-like moments. :grin:
Like you I am the equivalent of a human Labrador- I cannot connive, spy, or cheat on anyone, I always wear my heart on my sleeve.

As an IT guy since the 2000, I can -and will - admit I felt dumb more often than I felt smart.

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A few years ago in spring on the morning after the start of daylight savings time I was riding my bike to work in a sleep deprived state and I was really wishing that I had that additional hour of sleep.
About a kilometre into the ride there’s a four way stop. I was pretty much on autopilot, extremely tired and simply blasted through the stop, taking the right of way of the car coming from the right (the rule is called “Rechts vor Links” in Germany, literally “right before left”, meaning that on a crossing, road traffic coming from the right has the right of way and if there is traffic from all directions one of the parties has to yield its right of way after which the rule applies again). I was lucky in more than one way:

  • a lot of cars simply check their right and ignore the stop line, blasting right through the crossing if there is no traffic from the right but this car actually stopped and had just started moving when I was going through the stop
  • He was actually paying attention and reacted just in time to avoid a collision.

I apologised profusely and had to stop for a minute afterwards to calm down as I was physically shaken after the realisation had set in how close a shave that was. On the plus side I was now fully awake and safely made my way to work.

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I read somewhere years ago that there is small but measurable increase in mortality during the time change to DST.

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I should preface this story… Before working for the railway, I worked for a large Welding equipemt firm (ESAB group) now whilst working there i got to play with some great fun (and possibly dagerous toys) from normal welding gear, mig, Tig, MMA, gas cutting, angle grinders … to the slightly more fun… Plasma, Arc air, thermic lances… but the only tool that nearly I have nearly had a Dawin moment with was (sorry, looking at @schurem) a garden hedge cutter.

I was quite happly trrimming the hedge and turned the blade sideways to do the front of the hedge… and cut the cable to much shouting from the daughters and wife that power in the house has gone out. I now have a battery one :laughing:

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Could have been worse. I cut myself with the big orange Husqvarna hedge trimmer once. Five stitches and a scar to impress the women with. That thing ate me like a snack. I gained a lot of respect for this seemingly innocent tool that day.

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120mph through a fence on my GSXR whilst tumbling

Being trapped in a yard between 2 chained up rottweilers and no way past them or back despite there being signs…

Pulling the roof off a barn because i was looking at the floor and not the roof on a trenching machine.

Jumping out of bed in a lorry one night because i had a dream i hadnt set the handbrake and released the already set handbrake

Spinning a digger round whilst loading it on a low loader and forgetting it had a breaker attached and sitting on the balance point staring at the floor when it settled gently back down instead of on top of me.

Nearly getting shot on a skeet shooting course. Millimeters of clearance. Bird shot whistles BTW

I’m a walking darwin award.

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Hmmm, too many to cover. BUT, there was this time I almost drowned (and I’m a pretty good swimmer), due to not stopping to think things through…

1985-ish. New boat. small one, about 18 feet, center console type. Couldn’t afford a ‘good’ one…went a weee bit over my head on this (young and dumb). This is starting to sound familiar, I may have told this one, but I’m committed…

Anywho, I took my room-dog and his girl friend for some laps around the bay. Was a bit tight on money of course. Fired it up and the gas gauge said, “you’re fine…”.

Yes, I know boat gas gauges are not precision instruments. So, at some point the engine sputters to a halt. Prior to that the gauge was still ‘bouncing’, a little, convincing me “it’s gonna work”.

We are now adrift - ONLY 400 yards from shore. Fine, I’ll swim for it, and go get someone to come fetch them. Well, the tide was going out, to sea. It may have only been about 4 knots-ish but that was still too much.

After about 5 minutes of hard free-styling it I look up and I’m further away than when I started, going the wrong way. Then I finally got smart, yelling, 'Bob, buddy, throw me a life preserver…please". He didn’t come close. I was too far away.

Okay, plan B. Tread some water and have Bob grab a line and swim a couple of PFD’s out. Bought him a beer. And learned a lesson about the power of water.

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Unlike Eric, I have a healthy respect for electrickery. I have done since I was a kid and while holding the non insulated part of the spark plug for a lawn mower, gave the start cord a good hard yank to see if lack of spark was why it wasn’t starting…

And Ace. I have too many close calls on a motorcycle to count but luckily the only times I have parted company with the bike is at the track. Lots of scrapes, sprains and bruises an the worse injury I ever sustained was after coming off at about 180km/h and sliding for about 50m, it wore through 4 of the 5 layers of leather on the pants - no abrasions but I had a blister the size of my palm on my right arse cheek.

Jross, I was foolish enough to get caught in a rip one time. Swimming out through the surf was easy (too easy with hindsight) and I nearly drowned getting back to shore before I remembered to swim across and not against the rip.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the competitor that never wins the prize despite trying really hard.

But the one that takes the cake is:

I have spent a fair bit of time at Woomera. Amazing place and rather than give you a wall of text describing, it here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera,_South_Australia

One time when were doing stuff in a fairly remote area on the range one of my co-workers and I decided to have a bit of a ‘look around’ one of the many dry lake beds in the area. I spotted a strange looking piece of metal half buried in the salt pan, so what did I do to try and dislodge it? I kicked it, yep that’s right I kicked it and when that didn’t work I kicked it again.

It was about then that my colleague, did I mention he was an Air Force EOD tech, noticed what I was doing and starts screaming at me “STOP, STOP, YOU ■■■■■■■ IDIOT DON’T YOU REALISE WE COULD BE IN AN OLD IMPACT AREA”

Oops. I really should have known better and as it turns out it was actually the remains of an old leaf spring from a vehicle, but still… Bad enough getting a Darwin award for yourself, extra bad when you (potentially) take someone else out with you.

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That gets someone every few years here. It’s sneaky, hard to see.

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:raised_hand: I’ve been shot, twice, now that you mention it. Bird shot.

Once, with my nephew. A good kid (about 17 at the time) but not the…hmmm…most astute. We were desert quail hunting and a small covey gets up behind us. He’s about 80 yards away on my left They fly between us and I just watch (not safe to shoot). Then I see his face get that ‘focused’ look; butt comes up; he starts tracking…I hit the dirt. The grass was only about 2 feet tall. He never saw me. But he did hear me after that!

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Oooh @Harry_Bumcrack reminded me of when i was in Sydney and i saw an amazingly tiny octopus with beautiful blue rings and went to pick it up to impress the blonde aussie girl i was with.

Darwin and also no kissing :joy:

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@Harry_Bumcrack
Me and the my wife are planning to make a plan to get to Aussie-land. Play some golf. See some things. I grew up in Florida, playing in the swamps and wood lots. To include gators, sharks, barracudas, snakes - all the ladies in the neighborhood seem to call me every time a rattle snake or cotton mouth ends up on their porch; I finally bought a ‘grabber’ cus as I get older I’m not so fast anymore - a rake and shovel wasn’t as much ‘fun’ as it used to be :).

All to say: Australia makes me a little squeamish? They say, what, if it crawls, slithers, or swims it’ll kill ya, quick. Right? :slight_smile:

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We need context… Tell us more, or, ya kno…post pics. What?

Drop Bears are the worst, or so I’m told…

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You made me look that up

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I always laugh when I read about that. It is, as you say, a thing…
People die from getting up one hour earlier, once a year.
Try working for an airline! :laughing:

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This one is absolutely adorable…

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Yeah, we like to riff on the ‘everything will kill you and even if it can’t, it wants to meme’ but seriously, obey the warning signs (especially the crocodile and ‘marine stinger’ ones) if you are in the North and you will be fine.

Snakes, yeah we have IIRC 8 of the top 10 deadliest, but I doubt you will see one, outside of a zoo.

IMHO you have more to worry about in US woodland areas than you do here: bears, mountain lions, wolves, elk! Heck, I was even warned about squirrels (rabies).

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She must have been quite something if he wanted to pick up one of these: Blue-ringed octopus - Wikipedia

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