ever do anything realy stupid?

What kind of stupid things have you guys done?

I would like to start out with what happened to Me today.

I am trying to mod a Vercorlite 118 into HID useing a 21 watt hid bulb and ballast. Well the ballast is to dang big so I was trimming off the case as that was not needed. Got that done just fine so here comes the time to shave off some of the epoxy potting compund. I was not paying attention and shaved off part of the circuit board! Upon inspection nothing seemed to be electricaly damaged so I when and hooked it to a battery. DUBBLE checking the wireing. BAG puff of smoke, I hooked it up backwards /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif Even after dubble checking the /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif wireing I still hooked it backwards! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif I must be color blind sometimes, thats 80 bucks flushed /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smoker5.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif
If it was not for the epoxy potting I could still fix it! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif Anyone know of any chemicals that can eat epoxy?

Hmmm,

Most memorable things that come to mind are playing with 5 sticks of dynamite and then a separate occasion with 2 really big pipe bombs.

Of course, if you're in law enforcement, I'm only kidding. And if I'm not kidding, I was a minor at the time and no one was hurt. Furthermore, I wasn't even in the same state as these items, at any time.

How about spending $90 for one of the first hobby-level semi-conductor red lasers, carefully building a drive circuit for it, starting it a low power and gradually getting it up to rated power on the breadboard, then, in a fit of screwing around, start playing with lenses over then thing to get the best "dot on the ceiling". Press down on the laser's TO5 housing and ZAP! fry the stupid thing by shorting the sense diode lead to the case. Total run time? 4 minutes.

When I was in college I built a Jacobs Ladder from some coat hanger, wire and a 2X4. It was connected to the flyback on an old TV with the back open. Worked rather well.

Anyway I was blasted on Southern Comfort and feeling rather good so I showed it off to my girlfriend and some of her friends. As soon as they were in the room the damn thing stopped working.

Genius that I was I diagnosed the problem immediately. The wire to the hot side of the flyback transfomer had come loose.

Feeling proud of my quick diagnosis I promptly reached out, grabbed the wire and reconnected it..............

When I awoke I remembered the feeling of sledgehammers hitting me and looked up from flat on may back to several girls looking down at me with their mouths open.

At least I did not loose control of my bowels.....

When I was a stupid teen, I flushed a lighted cherry bomb down one of those porcelain wall-mounted urinators at the local Jr. High. Normally, the fuses on cherry bombs will continue to burn under water, but this one went out when I flushed it.
Good for the urinator, and probably VERY good for me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

Oh yeah, but it's probably too long a list to post! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Two words: nitrogen tri-iodide

I was trouble shooting a tube circuit I had built from a Heath Kit (yes, that long ago) with a multimeter. Ground clip was unshielded and kept slipping off the chassis so I was holding that on with one hand. Probe was apparently also unshielded. All the heater voltages (6.3 V) checked out OK. Put my probe on the first plate voltage (220 V, with some kick behind it). Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor 6 feet behind my overturned chair.

Luckily I was 17 at the time so my heart re-started just fine by itself. Don't think that would be the case now.

Also luckily, there are few home made tube circuits around these days.

LOLROTF...

Nitogen tri-iodide... had a toothpick buried in my nose once....

Oh guys...

Which do I pick from?

Like having the cops show up during a tender moment in the back seat of a car.

Antenna maintainance during a thunder storm.

120 / 220vac issues.

Sleeping through a mortar attack, and having to be woken up to get into a shelter.

Burning out an automatic transmission in Maryland.

Neglecting to use fuses.

Geting poisened on CO2.
Geting poisened on N2.
Geting poisened on CO.

Geting my 4x4 hung up on a dirt pile.

There is more but Im unwilling to share.

Keep it warm
Jack Crow in Iraq

where would I start?!

Yes

spat my coffee up when I saw this header ... where to start?

Southern Comfort ... ugh /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smoker5.gif

at an away function in high school, ingested a pint of Southern Comfort followed by three stiff brandy sours with the gals down the hall, and halfway thru the pint of blackberry brandy, my friends carried me back to the hotel room where i fortunately puked most of it up... dry heaves for about 24 hours following ... wretchedly sick for several days with acute alcohol poisoning ... and deservedly so.

I'd retch just smelling Comfort from the end of the bar for years after that ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sick.gif

oh yeah and nitrogen triiodide ... and potassium chlorate and 1:1 Zn:S /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif

most recently, rolling my Suby wagon going 70MPH on I-70

thanks to Whoever is looking out for us in our moments of extreme idiocy!

hideo

For my Thirteenth birthday my Dad rented a tank of Helium so we could give all the kids balloons. The next evening I was doing what any other red-blooded American kid would do with all that gas - breathing it. I took an especially deep breath, ran into the living room (during my parents dinner party) sang "We represent the lollipop guild" and promptly passed out hitting the main course on the way down. The tank was returned the next day

oh man, these threads are fun /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif You'll find a great history of these threads if you do a little searching. A new one gets started every few months and the stories are always great. I've already told my best ones a few times so I'll leave it up to those willing to search the board /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

About the helium, Joel /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif I was reading one of my wifes medical magazines a couple of years ago (No, I don't regularly read them, but there are situations when you're stuck somewhere for a while and you just read whatever is handy /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ) and in the index I saw an article about the dangers of helium. I scoffed and read the article. The fellow in question had taken a hit right off the high pressure tank, and perforated a lung! So, helium will just make you pass out from lack of O2, but you generally start to breathe again after you pass out as long as you didn't hit your head too hard. But if you over pressurize your lungs, that is a bad thing.

[ QUOTE ]
nerdgineer said:
Two words: nitrogen tri-iodide

[/ QUOTE ]

OH yeah, red phosporus and potassium chlorate. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif I'm convinced to this day that it was divine intervention that it only resulted in a trip to the ER! Other stupidities- too many to enumerate!

Larry

I forgot all about the helium thing till Joel mentioned it. I did a combination of taking a hit off the tank and nearly passing out when I was a young kid. Haven't done anything like that since.

Yes.

Have no earthly idea where to begin!

Jack and I could be best buddies I think!

Keep your head down! And keep an eye on your six.

I wonder how long the feds stay pissed off?? Some unnamed people took a very very large plastic bag, Visulize a bag 4 feet across before being filled with the welding mixture of acetylene and oxygen in the proper proportions. They taped a firecracker to the bag(finding the one with the longest fuse first) and assigned the most agile appearing amongst them to lite said fuse and depart the area post haste while the smart? ones remained in the door way to observe it from a safer distance. the shock wave flattened the most agile one 10 feet from the building and knocked the ones in the doorway on their keisters. within 10 minutes the local,state and feds were there with a whole bunch of questions to ask people with terminal ringing in the ears and totally lost in the wilderness looks. We found out some sort of explosion broke windows for almost a mile radius. There was a large area of flattened weeds but nothing else! We had a engineer that worked with us that was an amateur rocketeer that made his own solid rocket propellent on the company property and they suspected he might know something about what it was but he was out of town! Hmmmm

Of course, publishing detailed instructions on how to repeat the stupid thing one has done coudn't possibly tempt one of our forum colleagues to try it again.

Noooo...not with THIS forum!