Stupid people tricks...

[Silvan]

Not really woodworking related, but of all my haunts, I could think of no better place than this to share this object lesson in the value of not having one's head up one's ass.

Had the hedge trimmer out with my super long, expensive, dedicated outdoor power tool chord. I was letting my boy have a shot at using the thing, to get the kid away from that stupid Pokemon game for a few minutes.

He had a bit of trouble, so I took the trimmer back and started showing him how to use the thing. So zip, zip, zip, crap. I cut the chord. The super long, expensive, dedicated outdoor power tool chord.

Damn.

Conventional wisdom says never splice an extension chord back together, but I figured what the hell, it will be OK long enough for me to finish this job. The chord was plugged into a power strip in my shed, um, my workshop, so I went in and cut it off. Lights went off. Fan went off. Power was off.

So I got out in the yard, sat down "Indian style" (*), whipped out my handy dandy multi-tool doodad, and set about patching the thing back together. I cut what was left of the wires, then started stripping off the sheathing, so I could get to the insulation.

I felt a little prickle, but the power strip was off, so I figured I must have just poked myself on one of the stray bits of wire. I decided to test this theory by using my uninsulated steel multi-tool gadget to intentionally ground out the wires, and prove to myself that I hadn't felt the previous tingle.

To perform this task, I chose the knife blade, since that was what was sticking out.

ZAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP!!!

THOCK!!!!!

So I shocked the piss out of myself (not quite literally), screamed like some dizzy blonde in a horror movie (it's really quite embarrassing how much I sound like a complete pussy when something takes me by surprise and causes me to vocalize before I've had a chance to summon up my manly voice) and stabbed myself in the leg with my knife all in the blink of an eye. I was so, well, shocked that I didn't even notice the stab wound right away.

Should have pulled the plug out of the socket, huh? I guess the power strip has a bad switch or something. One thing for damn sure is that the power wasn't completely off!

So to make up for behaving like such a sissy, I walked around on it until I had lost a good half pint of blood, and had left bloody footprints all over the place while I finished the job of trimming the stupid hedges.

My next hedge trimmer is going to be gas powered.

(*) I guess we have to say "Native American style" now, huh?

[spearfox]

My apologies for this, but...LMAO! Well your boy may have learned a lesson or two. Don't do things like dad does. And/or Stay away from yard work.

[George]

Last year's words. "First Americans" is in vogue now. Never mind claims of extraterritoriality and status as foreign nations....

[J.B. Bobbitt]

Check your power strip again. Some have one or a couple of "unswitched" outlets along with the switched outlets.

It'd be a good thing to know.

-JBB

[Wolf Lahti]

Silvan said

Oh, good! Then we can hear how you nearly truned yourself into a flaming fireball. (Is there any other kind?)

[Larry Blanchard]

Another off-topic response, but I couldn't resist :-).

While doing some contract programming for Kaiser Aluminum, I worked with several engineers from Ghana. They got a kick out of being described as the only people I knew who could really claim to be "native" to their native land :-).

[Ernie Jurick]

Sorry, but the current population of Ghana is made up of immigrants who moved south as the Sahara expanded thousands of years ago.

The only fer-shure natives are the ones who lived where Olduvai Gorge is now. Everybody else is an interloper. :-)

-- Ernie

[Silvan]

No apologies necessary. I'd have been upset if you didn't laugh your ass off. :)

Yeah buddy. Do as I say, not as I do!

At least I was wearing safey glasses at the time.

[George]

Absolutely. Folks with an axe (tomahawk?) to grind can try to rearrange reality any way they want, but If they're younger than I, a circumstance becoming more and more common, strangely, then they were not "here before" I was.

Not to mention, unless certain folks are 150 years old, they were never slaves, and as I am not, I have nothing to apologize for, much less indemnify them for....

[Silvan]

Yeah, I never even thought of that... The thing almost certainly has a breaker, and it definitely should have tripped.

Pure brain damage, what can I say? I know better.

I guess now my son knows better too. :)

[Silvan]

Yeah, the whole stabbing myself in the leg thing just made it too priceless, didn't it? :)

The amazing thing is that I must have hit a patch with sparse nerve endings. I still haven't really felt that.

Probably just as well, because it looks painful. :)

[Robert Bonomi]

Generally, a power-driven 'cut' _breaks_ the 'short' *before* the latency built into a breaker allows it to trip. It is a _very_ momentary overload.

[Pat Barber]

This story needs to go in the hall of shame...

Great story...

Silvan wrote:

[Tim Shoppa]

The breaker is on the what's supposed to be the "hot" wire. If the neutral and hot have been mixed up on their way to the power strip, then the breaker will never trip.

Breakers *do not trip instantly*, either... and the many milliseconds it takes a breaker to trip or a fuse to blow is more than enough to make you stab yourself!

I think that the power strip was only switching the "neutral" off when you turned it off... it's consistent with everything you told us. If so, there is a problem almost certainly is in the wiring before the power strip. (Does the electrical code require power strips to switch both hot and neutral? I think it only requires them to switch the hot, or maybe it doesn't require anything at all...)

Tim.