Avalon mentioned my “fix it” prowess the other day in a seperate thread. It is clear to me and many others that I will never make it as an electrician if this finance gig doesn’t pan out. As a multitude of TBPers have built their own houses, done their own plumbing, and fix their own cars, I most certainly do not fall into the category of handy.
But, the rumors that this is my pool, are unfounded. Even I couldn’t be that stupid. Or could I?
Episode #1 – The Mystery of the Ringing Doorbell
When my son Jimmy was 2 or 3 years old he was a royal terror. Every day seemed like a death match between him and the world. It was essential that he take his 2 or 3 hour nap in the afternoon so everyone could get a break. Kevin was 6 or 7 years old and his little friends would ring our doorbell all day long for him to come out and play. Every time the doorbell would ring, Jimmy would wake up from his nap and begin terrorizing the household. Avalon could have put up this sign:
Instead Avalon eventually asked her Dad to disconnect the doorbell until Jimmy grew up. A few years went by and there were no longer naps needed in the Quinn household. Avalon said we could reconnect the doorbell. Simple enough, I thought. I took the cover off the doorbell unit on the wall and there were wires everywhere. I had no idea which wires went where, so I guessed and rehooked them. I got off the ladder and pushed the doorbell. It worked. Case closed. Another household job handled by the multi-dimensional Administrator.
At 1:00 am that night, I was awoken by the doorbell ringing. I thought WTF in my stupor. I stumbled down the stairs to see who would be at the door at 1:00 am. To my chagrin, no one was there. I went back up to bed. At 2:00 am the doorbell rang again. I started cursing and accusing kids in the neighborhood of pulling a prank. But, there were no kids in sight. The freaking doorbell was ringing itself whenever it felt like it. It went on all night periodically waking me up.
In the morning I went downstairs and it smelled like something was burning. It was the doorbell unit. I had evidently put the wrong wires in the wrong spots and short-circuited the whole thing. I disconnected it before it burst into flames and to this day, our doorbell does not work.
But this is just a warm-up for my all-time doozy. My Chevy Chase Moment.
Episode #2 – This Isn’t a Live Wire, Is It?
Shortly after moving into our house in 1995 I noticed that a bunch of other houses in the neighborhood had attic fans on their roof. It sounded like a good idea to cheaply cool off the house. We hired a guy to install it. He did all the work and it worked automatically when the temperature reached a certain level. After about a year, it stopped working. We never got it fixed. I just forgot about it.
It was February 2003 and I left for a week long trip to Oxford University in the UK while working for IKEA. While I was away a 24 inch blizzard hit Phila.
After a 12 hour ordeal getting home, I walk into the house to a bucket up in the hallway catching the dripping water from the ceiling. It seems that the wind was so intense that it blew the snow up through the attic fan and into the attic where it was melting. I was tired and pissed off. We have a tiny hole in the kids closet where you can shimy into the attic. I went up there with a bucket and a shovel to get rid of the snow. I was not a happy camper.
I vowed to block off the attic fan hole the next day. I got a big hunk of wood, wood screws and my drill and headed up into the attic. There is no light, so Avalon was on the ladder with a flashlight shining it where I needed to cover the fan. I started my project and realized there was a pesky wire leading to the attic fan. This wire was blocking me from covering the fan properly. Being a dumbass accountant, my mind told me that since the fan hadn’t worked since 1997, there was no electricity running through the wire. I told Avalon to get me my wire cutters. You might have an idea of what happened next.
As Avalon held the flashlight I cut into a live wire. A shocking development as the electricity in the whole house blew out. The only reason I’m here today is the wire cutters had rubber grips. I dropped the wire cutters and luckily didn’t step off the beam I was balanced on and fall through the ceiling ala Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.
Now you know how I almost killed myself and why I pay to have all my electrical work done.
Have any of you almost killed yourself due to carelessness, stupidity, or hubris?
I’m in stitches.
If something happens to Marsh and I’m left to do the fucking taxes – even though I believe in being honest and paying my fair share – they’d toss my dumb ass in jail because those forms totally jack me up.
God gave us all different talents.
Yes.
I was working in Abilene, [yupp after the song Abilene] Texas at the American Airlines aircraft maintenance facility. They were working on puddle jumpers like this one:
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Which is a turbo-prop aircraft. Well we had finished doing all the indoor maintenance and it was time to go outside and run up the engines and check things out.
So we had the engines running and props spinning and it was time to pull the chocks out and taxi to a run up area. I was used to working on jet engines and not props and it was dark outside since I worked second shift and as with a jet engine, at idle, isnt inherently dangerous as long as you didnt get to close to the intake. I walked up the side of the engine toward the cockpit to let them know I had pulled the chocks and came within a inch or two of walked into the propeller. The prop was pitched so that it didnt feel the propwash or really see it.
Scared the holy bahjeebus out of me when I nearly killed myself.
Then there was time time when I was working on a DC-9 for Continental airlines down in San Antonio.
The job of the day was to rig the main gear doors. Well to do one part of the maintenance on the landing gear you had to be in the wheel well [gear down] and adjust this telex cable so the gear down opened and closed at the right time. Well there is also a lever for maintenance just behind the gear on the lower fuselage to bypass hydraulic pressure to the gear door.
Well I was up in the wheel well with the door closed and the moron operating the hydraulic bypass lever decided to move the lever, which released the hydraulic pressure, causing me to fall towards the unforgiving tarmac.
The moron saw what he did and instead of just letting me fall and hit the hard ground he moved the lever back again causing hydraulic pressure [3000 lbs worth] to close the gear door while I was in mid flight towards my hopeful target mother earth instead I got hit by the gear door and the concrete.
Yeh, it hurt real bad. I almost got killed. I least I wouldnt have done it to myself. I guess.
Hey Bill – As A&P type or crew?
Jeezus… I got sprayed by Skydrol when I walked under the main gear door on a DC8. Jackass in cockpit decided to ‘test’ the emergency air brake and most of the fittings were loose. We were halfway through a C check. My stupid ass figured that there’s NO FUCKING REASON for anybody to pull THAT fucking handle on a Saturday morning of a holiday fucking weekend, filling my lungs with atomized hydraulic fluid!
And I’m avionics, it’s not even my god damned system I know more about it than that dumb shit.
Gotta love airplanes. (Coz they very well may kill you.)
Guess who was flying the plane?
http://www.maniacworld.com/stunt-plane-loses-its-wing.html
MA
Why yes. I knitted a sweater for my cat once.
Last time I’ll ever do a fool thing like that.
A & P, Ecliptix.
Started with Braniff Airlines shortly before they went under for the last time.
I’ve seen that video before cant remember who was flying it though, MA.
RE?
Similar experience with Emery Worldwide, myself. The fucked up thing… Pan-Am was our ‘other solid customer’. Yeah.. That job didn’t last too long.
KB: Answer here.
I saw my Director of Maintenance almost kill himself once. Since he lived we then joked about it. His name before the incident was Rupert. After the incident it was Stupid Rupert.
Heres how it went;
They had a 727 with pressurization problems and Rupert, who did his best thinking, apparently at night during sleep after consuming much beer finalized his genius plan while awaking to take a leak, as he did quite often which we knew because he would call the Hangar and give us things to do in preparation for the next days work.
So Stupid Rupert had us put the 727t out on the ramp in preparation and to make sure it had a certain amount of fuel in the wing tanks to run the small jet turbine aux power unit in the wheel whell]
Rupert shows up to work with 5 or 6 five gallon buckets and proceeded to fill them with absorbent [cat litter] as he was a forward thinker, and place them at fairly equal intervals inside the 727s cabin. Rupert, being Rupert, then launched himself up the airstairs into the cabin, which was a feat in itself for he liked his beer and potatoes, and proceeded to close the cabin doors and windows.
And so Rupert, grinning from ear to ear for he was going to find the pressurization leak, signaled us thru the cockpit window that he was about to begin. The APU whined to life as Rupert managed to flip the correct switches, power up the plane and to fill the cabin with bleed air from the little jet engine in the wheel well.
And so Rupert, being the visionary he was, donned one of the pilots smoke masks then proceeds thru the cabin setting off the smoke bombs he had placed in the five gallon buckets of cat litter, for he would have burned the flooring of the plane.
And so it went. The cockpit windows were soon filled with smoke. And time went by. And some more time went by. And we never saw Rupert again. Literally. So we waited. The APU was still running so we knew the cabin was still pressurizing. But Rupert was still not back in the cockpit.
Well. This was a fine how do you do. We couldnt open the cabin or cockpit doors because the pressure on those doors wouldnt allow it. What to do. Well, there was a emergency APU cut-ff handle by the left hand gear. So we pulled it. But it still took a while for the pressure to bleed off so we could open the doors and find Rupert, who, by this time, was laying prostrate on the cabin floor. Rupert hadnt been able to find his way back to the cockpit. And even if he did he probably wouldnt have been able to find the APU cut-off switches anyway,
So Rupert got a free ride to the hospital that day plus a few more just to make sure.
But he lived.
And thats how he became to be known as Stupid Rupert.
It wasn’t me. Just an illustration of a man who was literally one with his aircraft (since we seem to have a lot of aircraft connected people on TBP) and came about as close as one can come to eating it without quite doing it.
As a pilot, I admired his absolute skill and mastery of the art. And there have been several times when dumb luck came squeaking between me and disaster of the deadly sort, but that guy is something else..
I once – about 8 years ago, got caught in a hole in a kayak paddling down the Colorado River.
It sucked me in and was rolling me over and over, beating me on a flat rock every time around. I figured I’d bought the farm until – completely by accident – another paddle raft (6 person raft – pretty hefty) ran over the hole and popped me out the other side. They upset in the hole and bodies and boat came right after me and damn neat did me in worse than the hole did at first.
I had bangs and scrapes the rest of the trip – but I complained not at all having seen what the bottom of the Colorado River looked like far too long. Seemed like I must have swallow a lot too, cause I remember peeing like a race horse shortly thereafter.
MA
I thought that video looked really odd [as in hoax] the first time I saw it years ago.
Nice to see Snopes has pretty much debunked it. Thanks for the link Thinker.
Well glad to see your still with us MA
Admin: love any references to Clark W. Griswold, the hero of the modern-day white man.
Cousin Eddy, the hero of the NASCAR set.
At least you don’t have to stick you fingers where the sun don’t shine.
Back in the day, I was on a sub based out of Norfolk. We were out for a couple weeks on exercises and the powers-that-were decided to run a loss of propulsion drill. (I believe there’s at least one other sub guy out here so at least one person will get it.)
Well, everybody up forward knew what the deal was but for some reason, we suspect the Engineering Officer wasn’t informed or was incorrectly informed or whatever – long story short, we ran the drill, they actually scrammed the reactor instead of simulating scramming the reactor.
So here I sit in Sonar, boat’s kicked to about a 25 degree up-angle, sliding backward with no power, somewhere off the coast of Virginia. At night. And I’m looking at the depth gauge as it clicks past that magic number they tell you not to go past.
Apparently, Cap figured out that Eng fucked up BAD, and threw the chicken switches that set off that emergency surface routine that always plays on Discovery Channel.
It was not a good job to be laundry bitch the next day.
By scrammed you mean they jettison the reactor?
Kill Bill: I was a pilot for Braniff International. The first one, a great airline. Horrible mgt though. The mechanics I worked with used to put a placard in the cockpit instructing us not to apply hydraulic pressure or electrons to anything. Also, don’t move the controls. You guys did a fantastic job taking care of the equipment.
Yes, they still had a few old Braniff mechs around when I started and I learned a great deal from them on the 727s Ragman and we also had our problems with management but generally told them if they wanted us to the work their way they could sign off the paperwork and be responsible. *crickets*
Later on Braniff became Dalfort and all that 727 experience was very beneficial to them when Federal Express started bringing their 727s in for heavy checks.
Did you fly the 747 or the 727 Ragman?
@KillBill – that’s what he means. From what I’ve been told, dropping a big, heavy nuke reactor does unpleasant things to a sub’s balance.
Noooooo… they just drop the rods and cool it. Basically, what the Japs recently completely fucked up. It takes awhile to restart it.
I saw where the Japanese have now admitted to fuel rods melting in three nuke plants.
When I was stationed in Germany I borrowed my friend’s BMW motorcycle racer … can’t remember the model .. and took it to about 140mph on the Autobahn.
Nothing bad happened, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. But looking back, that was the second dumbest thing I ever did in my life.
I once said reding RE’s posts is like getting a college education. That was dumber.
ummm .. make that “reading”
@ecliptix543: Holy crap.. Talk about a pucker job. My late son-in-law retired as an FTC on Fast Attacks and had some fine sea stories to tell. I worked on the boomers out of Holy Lock for a couple of years doing real time testing of communications reliability while out on patrol.
When they came in, I was usually the first aboard after they popped the hatch and that jocks and socks smell is unforgettable. I was working for Johns Hopkins at the time and only went for two different deployments and that was more than enough for this puppy..
MA
During flight training touch and goes I landed and jammed the throttle full on for the next go around. I was practicing with full flaps for steep landings.
I failed to retract the flaps before I gave ‘er the juice. This is a very bad thing. Ask Kill Bill to explain it in detail if you are interested. In short, the nose of the plane pointed itself nearly vertical instantly and I, with my fifteen hours of flight undr my belt, immediately crapped my pants. I then, of course did another bad thing – I yanked the power off and shoved the stick forward – and so now I had no power on and the nose was pointiing straight down. I pooped myself some more. So I yanked back on the stick – and stalled. I was now too shit scared to poop any more, jammed the stick forward to break the stall and somehow managed to bunny hop (bounce) the plane along the runway with killing myself or breaking the plane.
Flying can kill you very vey quickly. Errors compound themselves and happen instantly. The key is do not fuck up in the first place. I still freak even thinking about it.
I flew cropdusters for 21 seasons. Kinda known as the Hippy Dippy Ag-pilot
So yes… I have almost killed myself. Repeatedly.
It is completely impossible to ever mistake the particular stink of a submarine. I prefer working on airplanes (helicopters even more so) to anything that goes out in deep water.
So, then. Another key aspect of TBP readership is near-death experiences. Hmmm…
Yes, llpoh, that reminds me of a couple of pilots [a story related to me by another mechanic during] the check out flight of a 727 after a heavy maintenance check where they had to put the 727 into a stall.
A 727, because its a T-Tail, is not something you want to stall because in a nose up situation the wings block airflow to the horizontal stabilizer.
The pilots get the 727 in a stall. All good and well. But then start fighting over the controls as the 727 starts falling to Earth. They eventually get it under, or rather one of the pilots won control, and got the plane back down.
I wonder if that mechanic ever went on a check ride again…
CrazyIvan your supposed to zig zag left and right not up and down!! 😉
the zigzags were in the mapcase
Heh
In 1975 I was 16 and working at the local meat market as a clean up boy. One of my jobs was to clean the “Chicken Pit”. It was a 4′ by 4′ steel plate on the floor with 1″ sides and a drain. We would stack boxes of chickens packed in ice in there and as the ice melted it would go down the drain. It was a stinking slippery mess.
One day I climbed in and grabbed a box to move it so i could clean up. my feet quickly gave way and i started to slip. as i was falling face first i saw in front of me all the unused meat hooks lined up on the wall. as my face went first against the wall a meat hooks sharp point went right for my jugular. thank god it missed by a hair and ended up just grazing me. as i slowly recovered with my neck bleeding from a long scrape up towards my ear the 3 polish butchers who had seen almost everything started laughing their heads off and making fun of me.
all that for 90 cents/hour under the table.
Fucking A! Even I ain’t as dumb as all you domestic dumb asses!
Then pack your shit and leave. No hair off my nuts.
Kill Bill: 727 and DCOcho at BI. Since then, I checked out on the F-28, 737, 757,767, and finally A320. I have been instructing on the A320 for over 5yrs. Hanging it up in July after 41yrs in aviation.
We should start a damn airline. TBP Air. No security checkpoints, no drinks limits, Salma Hayek themed lavatory, pilots and crew heavily yet respectfully armed. In-flight narration by Smokey and Stucky, our professional and colorful flight attendants. They will make sure you don’t complain about anything. Ever again. We can paint the birds black, too. Millionaires, I tell you. Millionaires.