Kettle Not Boiling? The Surprising Reason May Leave You Feeling Dumb

[wolram]

I filled the kettle ready to make coffee then the phone rang, after taking the call i wondered why the kettle had not boiled, the kettle has an indicator light to show it is switched on, the kettle felt cold 5 mins after i filled it, so i got the meter out and started testing the element etc, all seemed ok, then i noticed the indicator was glowing even with the kettle unplugged, it was only then i realized the indicator seemed to be on as the sun was shining on it, and i had not switched the kettle on.
Stupid, but sun light rarely gets into my kitchen.

 

[Chi Meson]

I have filled the kettle, turned on the burner, and then left the house for the day.

Then, a week later, I did it again, with the NEW kettle.

 

[turbo]

We all make stupid mistakes. My garden spot was horribly deficient in organic materials when I started gardening here, so in the fall of 2006, I bought, spread, and tilled in a whole truck-load of peat. I fertilized as usual last spring with composted cow manure, blood meal, bone meal, etc, hoed up nice raised beds and planted. I bought chili seedlings and Bell pepper seedlings because our growing season is too short to get mature peppers otherwise. In about a week, I noticed that the plants were getting yellow. I made a run to the garden shop and bought a test kit for nutrients and pH. The nutrient levels were all good, but the pH of the soil was down around 5 and that was suppressing the uptake of nutrients (especially of nitrogen - thus the yellow color). I made a run to the nearest greenhouse and bought a few bags of powdered dolomitic lime and got the pH back up and ended up with a healthy garden. It took a couple of weeks to really turn around - I couldn't use quick-lime because I already had plants and sprouts every where and that would have shocked and burned them. What a rookie mistake for someone who has been gardening for over 50 years! Boy, did I feel dumb.

 

[Janus]

I remember the time the instructor, another student and myself spent several minutes trying to track down why we weren't getting any voltage to the circuits of a monitor until someone else asked if we had checked the fuse!

 

[turbo]

BTW, I wouldn't have felt quite as stupid about the rookie mistake, except that I had worked as a process chemist in a pulp mill for years and I knew that peat was acidic.

 

[Math Jeans]

I have filled the kettle, turned on the burner, and then left the house for the day.

Then, a week later, I did it again, with the NEW kettle.

My kettle switches itself off automatically

 

[Moonbear]

One of my dumb ones was getting up, putting the grounds in the coffee pot, turning it on, walking upstairs to get dressed, come back for my coffee, and there isn't any! I had forgotten to add water.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Went to Dunkin' Donuts to get coffee for my wife, ordered the coffee, paid for it, went back home. Went back to Dunkin' Donuts, picked up the coffee (they made me a fresh one), took it home to my wife.

 

[Danger]

I don't even know where to begin, but I've got lots.

 

[B. Elliott]

I have a bad short-term memory which shows itself on a daily basis. Seems like every time I go into a gas station to pay for gas and pick up a drink or snack, I always end up leaving the drink or snack on the counter. That, or i'll remember the drink, but i'll end up just hopping in my car and drive off, completely forgetting to pump the gas.

All that, yet I somehow remember all the programming codes from my machining days like it was yesterday.

 

[wolram]

I remember the time the instructor, another student and myself spent several minutes trying to track down why we weren't getting any voltage to the circuits of a monitor until someone else asked if we had checked the fuse!

Reminds me of the Southpark episode, the INTERNET is collapsing and little what's his name goes to California and has an idea, he overshadows all the bofins by re booting it.

 

[russ_watters]

Last Saturday, I was screwing together some metal studs with a long, wobbly self-drilling phillips-head screw and a power drill. I was holding the studs together with my hand, thumb out, an inch or so from where I was trying to drive the screw. I had a little trouble and needed to apply quite a bit of force to get it to bite (some self-drilling screws don't seem sharp enough to drill). While I'm doing it, I think, 'gee, I hope I don't slip off the screw".

You can guess what happened next...

 

[BobG]

I have a bad short-term memory which shows itself on a daily basis. Seems like every time I go into a gas station to pay for gas and pick up a drink or snack, I always end up leaving the drink or snack on the counter. That, or i'll remember the drink, but i'll end up just hopping in my car and drive off, completely forgetting to pump the gas.

All that, yet I somehow remember all the programming codes from my machining days like it was yesterday.

That reminds me of picking up a pizza with a friend. Get back home and no pizza. Back near the pizza parlor, we find our pizzas in the road, even flatter than they were when we bought them. One of us left them on the roof of the car.

I used to lose quite a few of those thermos coffee mugs that way, too. If I was lucky, someone honked at me or yelled at me before it fell off ... or maybe I'd remember it soon enough to at least find the mug in the road.

 

[wolram]

Last Saturday, I was screwing together some metal studs with a long, wobbly self-drilling phillips-head screw and a power drill. I was holding the studs together with my hand, thumb out, an inch or so from where I was trying to drive the screw. I had a little trouble and needed to apply quite a bit of force to get it to bite (some self-drilling screws don't seem sharp enough to drill). While I'm doing it, I think, 'gee, I hope I don't slip off the screw".

You can guess what happened next...

Ouch, them self drilling screws work great in soft materials.

 

[larkspur]

One of my dumb ones was getting up, putting the grounds in the coffee pot, turning it on, walking upstairs to get dressed, come back for my coffee, and there isn't any! I had forgotten to add water.

I've done that before too.

My coffee pot has a stainless steel insulated carafe instead of a glass pot. The carafe is kind of heavy when full of water and does not pour very quickly with the lid on it, so I used to fill the reservoir using the sprayer by the kitchen faucet. This was the preferred method until I forgot to empty the carafe of the previous mornings coffee. I woke the next morning to find coffee covering the entire counter top, seeping under all the appliances and dripping onto the floor.
Now, I use the carafe to fill the reservoir.

 

[HallsofIvy]

The very first day I moved into a new apartment, I went out to my car to go out to dinner and some idiot had parked, in the main lane, right behind me. He had even left the engine on. I was sorely tempted to get in and park it about two blocks away, but chickened out.

Any way, I got out some English muffins, about the only thing I had in my refrigerator and put them under the broiler. A moment later I notice that the car blocking mine had left and, without thinking about the English muffins under the broiler, I went out to dinner.

When I came back, there was a fire truck parked in front of my apartment building and a whole lot of people gathered around my front door!

Fortunately, there was a lot of smoke but no damage. It's be 5 years in that apartment and I haven't burned it down yet!

 

[mbrmbrg]

I was trying to re-string my brother's steel-string guitar, ruined my good pair of scissors trying to cut the strings (what can I say? I'm used to my classical guitar), was complaining about how it takes forever to manually unwind the strings, even with a pegwinder. Enter my sister, who points to my multi-purpose swiss-army-knife style pliers laying on my dresser, and asks my why I don't use the wire cutters that are part of that tool I carry around everywhere insisting it'll come in handy one day.

Well, gave us all a chance to hear that line of hers that I love so much: "Mali, for someone so smart, you can be really stupid sometimes."

 

[Moonbear]

Last Saturday, I was screwing together some metal studs with a long, wobbly self-drilling phillips-head screw and a power drill. I was holding the studs together with my hand, thumb out, an inch or so from where I was trying to drive the screw. I had a little trouble and needed to apply quite a bit of force to get it to bite (some self-drilling screws don't seem sharp enough to drill). While I'm doing it, I think, 'gee, I hope I don't slip off the screw".

You can guess what happened next...

OW! So how's the thumb healing?

I was installing an underdesk keyboard tray not long ago, and the instructions said to use the self-tapping screws...after drilling a pilot hole. No, they were not sharp enough to be self-tapping. (Sorry, that one wasn't my stupidity, but the instruction writer's...though I did try getting them to self tap for a while.)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I've forgotten to put the coffee pot in the coffee maker after starting the cycle.

Done the thumb thing before too, Russ.

 

[Moonbear]

I've also done things like walk the 10 min to my car in the rain at the end of the day, only to realize I left my keys on my desk. And there's always that "Oh CRAP!" moment as the door latches simultaneously with remembering the keys were still inside.

 

[russ_watters]

OW! So how's the thumb healing?

It's not too bad. I was surprised how far back the nail goes - I hit it around a quarter inch behind the nail. And it seems to have stopped bleeding, finally (and it was a real bleeder too - didn't hurt much, though). The most ironic thing was my friends wanted to go bowling that night and we haven't been bowling in like 5 years!

My dad did one better last year: he went to grab a clump of grass that was clogging up his lawnmower. Couldn't golf for a month!

 

[Moonbear]

My dad did one better last year: he went to grab a clump of grass that was clogging up his lawnmower. Couldn't golf for a month!

Ouch! That's like when my mom came in from mowing the lawn one day while I still lived home with her arm wrapped up in a rag and asked if I could take a look at it for her. These sorts of questions never bode well with my mom. Turns out she had tipped up the lawnmower to clean the underside of the grass clippings, and while she was reaching under, it flipped itself back upright and caught her arm with the edge of the mower.

 

[Chi Meson]

I've also done things like walk the 10 min to my car in the rain at the end of the day, only to realize I left my keys on my desk. And there's always that "Oh CRAP!" moment as the door latches simultaneously with remembering the keys were still inside.

I think it was Rich Hall (former SNL player and he of "Sniglet" fame) who dubbed that time interval as one "idiosecond."

 

[binzing]

I think I'm dumb...
Maybe just happy...