Extremely dumb things people do

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#2599092 6-Nov-2020 15:25

MikeB4:

This one is me dammit I cannot blame anyone. My wife recently purchased a Sodastream kit. I wasn't that interested but one bored day a couple of weeks back I decided to give it a try and in typical techie fashion I don't need no sodding manual. I grabbed the bottled filled with nice filtered water to to the indicated level and now my error begins, I proceeded to pour my flavour of choice into said water put it in the Soda machine. The resulting eruption of very fizzy, stick water would have put Rotorua's Pohutu Geyser to shame. I swear the amount of fluid had some quadrupled in the short time it was in the machine and the kitchen, machine and myself took quite some time to clean up.

I guess the lesson to be taken here is read the **&** manual. Yeah right.

Also, don't fizz the water, remove the bottle, then just pour the syrup in quickly! You'll get much the same effect! Slowly...slowly!

Geektastic

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#2599097 6-Nov-2020 15:28

trig42:

pdh:

Turn on your headlights or fogs, all day, every day.
If the energy cost worries you, turn off your air-con.

Do not turn your fogs on.

Especially if you have a European car with a super bright rear fog lamp (or you don't know how to turn off the rear fog lamp).

Reminds me of a time when I was driving on the M25 in the UK. The traffic was light and some dingus had his rear fogs on - you can see them from miles away if there is no fog.

A police car passed him and pulled in front. They have matrix signs in the rear window in the UK cars and all of a sudden a bright scrolling message appeared

"Turn Your Fog Lights Off!"

Brilliant.

frankv

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#2599131 6-Nov-2020 16:05

Geektastic:

A police car passed him and pulled in front. They have matrix signs in the rear window in the UK cars and all of a sudden a bright scrolling message appeared

"Turn Your Fog Lights Off!"

Perhaps Euro cars could have a panel on the bonnet, facing back towards the driver, with this message on it.

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#2599169 6-Nov-2020 16:41

frankv:

Perhaps Euro cars could have a panel on the bonnet, facing back towards the driver, with this message on it.

They are the most annoying thing - especially when the driver in front turns them on when you're already following at a safe distance and it starts raining/goes misty.

Geektastic

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#2599206 6-Nov-2020 17:55

frankv:
Geektastic:

A police car passed him and pulled in front. They have matrix signs in the rear window in the UK cars and all of a sudden a bright scrolling message appeared

"Turn Your Fog Lights Off!"

Perhaps Euro cars could have a panel on the bonnet, facing back towards the driver, with this message on it.

Normally not required because drivers there are perhaps more used to using them?

Handle9

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#2600238 9-Nov-2020 03:52

Dingbatt:

I thought we already had a thread for dumb things people do on the road/in a car?

Isn't that pretty much every driving related thread?

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#2600239 9-Nov-2020 03:55

MikeAqua:

richms:

They are annoying because when you are parked up somewhere on a call or meeting or something with the motor on so you have aircon, you have lights on and people think you are leaving the carpark and will stop and wait. Also if you're parked up at the side of the road waiting for someone, again, lights on drawing attention in an otherwise dark street. Would not recommend unless they can be turned off, which it seems is a feature that is lacking on cars with them.

In my 2020 Pajero, the DRLs will only turn on if the headlight control is set to auto and the main beams aren't on. Headlights set to off = no DRLs.

That system maybe peculiar to the Pajero though. It has a few oddball features - like headlight washers.

I think it's market specific. My 2015 GCC Spec has DRLs that run at all times.

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#2600240 9-Nov-2020 03:58

Geektastic:

MikeB4:

This one is me dammit I cannot blame anyone. My wife recently purchased a Sodastream kit. I wasn't that interested but one bored day a couple of weeks back I decided to give it a try and in typical techie fashion I don't need no sodding manual. I grabbed the bottled filled with nice filtered water to to the indicated level and now my error begins, I proceeded to pour my flavour of choice into said water put it in the Soda machine. The resulting eruption of very fizzy, stick water would have put Rotorua's Pohutu Geyser to shame. I swear the amount of fluid had some quadrupled in the short time it was in the machine and the kitchen, machine and myself took quite some time to clean up.

I guess the lesson to be taken here is read the **&** manual. Yeah right.

Also, don't fizz the water, remove the bottle, then just pour the syrup in quickly! You'll get much the same effect! Slowly...slowly!

I just got a (second hand from a friend leaving Dubai) Drinkmate which has a pressure relief valve you can control. It's quite a clever design and means you can fizz juice or pre flavoured water.

https://bubble-bro.com/product/drinkmate-soda-maker/

Dingbatt

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#2600261 9-Nov-2020 07:53

Handle9:

Dingbatt:

I thought we already had a thread for dumb things people do on the road/in a car?

Isn't that pretty much every driving related thread?

And yet this thread isn’t even in the Transport forum.

I believe Rikkitic started this thread as a ‘Darwin Awards’ type of discussion (for entertainment and educational purposes) but it has morphed into yet another ‘how bad all other drivers are’ one.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#2600275 9-Nov-2020 08:25

Sorry if I was the one who derailed this thread, it wasn't my intention. I just thought it was dumb to travel in wet/foggy/low-light conditions without lights on. Obviously I'm not the only one as on the way out of Christchurch heading south I saw two billboards saying "Low light? Turn your lights on" Opinions, like bums, everyone has one. :-)

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#2600277 9-Nov-2020 08:38

Not really ‘derailed’, but maybe left a spike on the track? ;-)

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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MikeAqua

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#2600306 9-Nov-2020 09:21

MikeB4:

This one is me dammit I cannot blame anyone. My wife recently purchased a Sodastream kit. I wasn't that interested but one bored day a couple of weeks back I decided to give it a try and in typical techie fashion I don't need no sodding manual. I grabbed the bottled filled with nice filtered water to to the indicated level and now my error begins, I proceeded to pour my flavour of choice into said water put it in the Soda machine. The resulting eruption of very fizzy, stick water would have put Rotorua's Pohutu Geyser to shame. I swear the amount of fluid had some quadrupled in the short time it was in the machine and the kitchen, machine and myself took quite some time to clean up.

I guess the lesson to be taken here is read the **&** manual. Yeah right.

Welcome back Mike. I made that exact mistake many moons ago. You only do it once.

Mike

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#2603542 13-Nov-2020 20:47

Gurezaemon:

I saw an article on this a while back. Someone did the maths and figured out that you could save 2 to 3 cents per year in petrol by not using your indicators. I imagine that you could save as much as 20 or 30 cents a year by only turning lights on when it is pitch black! <s>

I looked around and I found what I think is the article to which you refer and I am shocked that anyone could be taken in by it.

It started off by assuming that petrol was priced as in the UAE. The crude oil is essentially free and the purchaser pays only for the cost of refining and delivery.

Then it assumes that the energy load on the engine is just the energy consumption of the lamps themselves.

For most cars, the flash one/off circuit is an old mess of analogue components that uses as much energy as the lamps themselves. Why would the car maker care? It is cheap and fuel consumption is measured with the lights off. Then we have the ohmic losses in the wiring loom and the cheap as possible connectors. That more than doubles the power load applied to the alternator which is far from being a 100% efficient convertor of mechanical energy to electrical.

We can now back track to the conversion of mechanical energy from the crankshaft to the alternator rotor. All those bearings and then the rubber drive belt that soaks up energy through hysteresis and frictional slippage.

All of the above add up to an order of magnitude and then we get to the big one.

The calculation is based on the indicators flashing 20 times a day. That is not twenty operations of the indicators the calculations actually assume just twenty actual brief flashes on the indicators per day.

Not even fictional BMW drivers are so lacking.

I counted my actual flashes on my drive to work in the Welly rush hour. I hit just over 600 per day for my commute and just for completeness, I counted the same for whatever car happened to be in front of me and got a similar figure.

So the cost for a driver in NZ would be around $6-$10/ year and not a few cents. I would estimate that the cost of running with headlights on in the dark or in poor vis would be a few hundred dollars a year. Less if you have LED lights of course.

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#2603550 13-Nov-2020 21:17

Geektastic:

MikeB4:

This one is me dammit I cannot blame anyone. My wife recently purchased a Sodastream kit. I wasn't that interested but one bored day a couple of weeks back I decided to give it a try and in typical techie fashion I don't need no sodding manual. I grabbed the bottled filled with nice filtered water to to the indicated level and now my error begins, I proceeded to pour my flavour of choice into said water put it in the Soda machine. The resulting eruption of very fizzy, stick water would have put Rotorua's Pohutu Geyser to shame. I swear the amount of fluid had some quadrupled in the short time it was in the machine and the kitchen, machine and myself took quite some time to clean up.

I guess the lesson to be taken here is read the **&** manual. Yeah right.

Also, don't fizz the water, remove the bottle, then just pour the syrup in quickly! You'll get much the same effect! Slowly...slowly!

Oh man have i experienced both of these lessons the hard way, you are not, and will not be alone in the coming years with this!!

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#2618731 9-Dec-2020 14:59

This is more bad taste, but also with a dose of dumb and I don't know where else to put it, so will drop it here.

Some joker pranked TVNZ breakfast into wishing a happy anniversary to two of the UK's most prolific serial killers! In response, TVNZ has apologised profusely and promised better screening in the future.

On one level, I don't think this is entirely their fault. They rely on public submissions and they shouldn't have to be expected to subject everything that comes in to a police filter. But on another level, one complaint I have about our media in general, is a seeming lack of basic knowledge and judgement, and a tendency to cut and paste without bothering to check even the simplest details. This seem to be part of a general dumbing down that goes with a chronic lack of resources.

Most media professionals older than about 18 with even minimum education, might be expected to recognise the faces of Rosemary and Fred West, if not immediately, at least well enough to trigger questions. But with the elimination of proofreading, editors, and knowledge of how to use a word processor, has also gone common sense and an ability to pause and think. On that basis, TVNZ deserves what it got.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

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