What's YOUR biggest mess??

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EastWest Gal Not my spill but heard this on the news shortly after moving to PA: A lot of homes around here use oil heat. The heating oil truck comes to the home and I guess puts the oil in basement tank from the outside. Well, one of the oil trucks went to the wrong address and attached their oil hose to the spout outside. Problem was, there was no tank inside. They dumped the entire oil load directly on the basement floor. I cannot begin to imagine that cleanup problem. Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

I've heard this story a few times happening here on Long Island over the years. Often, the house was uninhabited so it wasn't discovered right away. It was a helluva mess, for sure.

[tryan]

Was gutting a ceiling .... pulling on a sheet of sheet rock ...looking up when the whole sheet freed from the ceiling. 5 decades of mouse droppings covered me from head to toe. No hat ... no safety googles.

I would estimate the piles where at least an inch high across 32 sq feet ... disgusting.

[tryan]

Quote:

A lot of homes around here use oil heat. The heating oil truck comes to the home and I guess puts the oil in basement tank from the outside. Well, one of the oil trucks went to the wrong address and attached their oil hose to the spout outside. Problem was, there was no tank inside. They dumped the entire oil load directly on the basement floor. I cannot begin to imagine that cleanup problem.

In a neighboring town a house was condemned for 5 years after the home owner exhausted their finances suing the oil company. Problem was the tank was faulty ... split during a fill. Lost the suit. Last I heard they are living in a trailer on the property.

AND the town says the trailer is a zoning violation. WHAT A NIGHTMARE.

[Asher Aion]

A new home in our area had heating fuel end up in the basement as well, the driver of the fuel truck unloaded in the new home on the property and not the old home as requested. Law suit ensued, and won, as the home was condemned.

At the visitation/wake of my father 20 years ago, family and friends gathered in the funeral home and paid last respects to my dad. As it was winter and people were hanging around, the coatrack in the smallish but packed room was beyond normal payload. My uncle, getting ready to leave pulled his coat off the rack sending the coatrack crashing to the ground and spewing coats all over in the process. A solemn event, with the sudden passing of my dad, turned nervous laughter and then uncontrolled laughter by all. My dad would have liked that.

My most recent mess was on Monday as I changed the pink cartridge on my HP4620 printer in my home office. Apparently I picked the blue cartridge, still 1/4 full, and promptly dropped it on my newer hardwood bamboo floor. I freaked, tried to soak the splatter, smeared it, and then screamed/swore, probably again. My DW, knowing me too well, calmly found some nail polish remover and fixed the problem in minutes. My mess but she bailed me out again.

[sengsational]

I love it when stuff like this happens.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asher Aion My DW, knowing me too well, calmly found some nail polish remover and fixed the problem in minutes. My mess but she bailed me out again.

Stuff like this is probably why married men live longer than single ones. We've had similar stuff happen here too. I lose things. DW somehow knows were it is.

[Meadbh]

I am enjoying this thread, but losing one's home due to oil in the basement is really sad.

Fortunately I don't have any major messes to report, although I did once have an episode of explosive diarrhea while waiting to board a plane. I think it was related to sushi I had eaten a couple of hours before at a little izakaya restaurant that a friend had taken me to. As a result, I am now very careful about what I eat while traveling and I always carry a spare pair of panties!

[Keim]

Thankfully you weren't IN the plane.

[tinlizzy]

The biggest mess I made was accidentally dropping a gallon of milk from a height of about 5 ft. The lid popped off and the jug split. There was milk everywhere including the ceiling.

The biggest mess my son made was with baby powder. I received a very large container of generic baby powder when he was born and I hated the smell of it. It went into the closet and he found it a few years later. When I found him he had a big pile on top of his head and baby powder in every nook of the room. Thankfully he had shut his bedroom door so I wouldn't catch him - which is exactly what made me suspicious.

But the biggest mess ever was the company I hired to blow insulation in the house failed to plug two old plumbing holes under the kitchen sink and blew insulation into the entire downstairs! My entire downstairs was gray! They cleaned it up but the dust in the air just kept settling. My mom and I cleaned every surface, every few days for a couple weeks!


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[travelover]

Just remembered a great mess.

When I was dating DW, she had just hard boiled an egg and was concerned that the yolk was not fully cooked. I, genius that I am, suggested giving the egg about 1 minute in the microwave oven. She had removed the egg and just set it on the table when it literally exploded like a firecracker. There was egg over every square inch of the kitchen including the ceiling, walls and floor. Scared the crap outta both of us, too.

[Rustward]

Maybe the biggest mess I ever made was entering "$PJ1-9999" on a system console (JES2) sometime around 1979 or 1980.

If nobody knows what that does, I'll post an update with the results of that command after a while.

[MRG]

P is stop(?), not sure how much got ended. Do want to hear the results. Ouch.

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[poorcarver]

In a career in heavy industry I have a lot of stories. My personal favorite mess that I observed but did not do was associated with a turkey fryer. When those items were relatively new my BIL (whom I do not care for as he has advanced smart a*s disease) bought one. My DW and I showed up and one of the SIL's came up to me and said to go outside that both BIL's were there with said fryer and she was scared they would burn down the house. So out I go. It was around 30 degrees out and getting dark. As I walk up to the two perps I notice heat waves shimmering above the vat of oil. Hmm. So I greet them and ask what is happening. The bright one says we are waiting for the oil to heat and it must be the cold but it is taking forever for the oil to get hot, look the thermometer just now says 220 or so and we need it to be 350 (or whatever it was). I look and the oil is seething and the thermometer is not touching the oil it is a good inch above the surface.

So I say so do you guys know what the vaporization point of cooking oil is and do you know what happens when this oil flashes over? I am saying this as I am walking back away from the whole future disaster. Bright boy points out that the oil is not even 300 degrees and I point out that the thermometer is not in the oil. Whereupon one of them shoved it down into the oil and sure enough, that oil is about 500 or so. So the next question they ask is so now what? As I am about to say turn off the flame before this whole thing goes up, bam up she goes. Wonderful. I was hoping that the garage would go but they were outside. The neighbor called the FD and a fine was issued and a good time was had generally. So the bird went in the oven and we ate really late.

[LoneAspen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rustward Maybe the biggest mess I ever made was entering "$PJ1-9999" on a system console (JES2) sometime around 1979 or 1980. If nobody knows what that does, I'll post an update with the results of that command after a while.

It sounds equally as disastrous as coding "DISP=(MOD,DELETE,DELETE)" in some JCL to delete a dataset. But then after running it, realizing you put it on the wrong DD statement, and wiping out several months of Purchasing/Receiving data.

Not that I ever did anything like that

[tryan]

oh how could i forget dry sanding an 800 sq ft room after 2 mud coats ... opened the doors and windows in the room and THOUGHT I had upstairs sealed off. Sanded for 8 hours with a palm sanded. Went upstairs only to see a fog/cloud of dust.

Spent the next 2 days cleaning EVERY SQ INCH of a 2500 sq ft home. Still finding spots I missed.

[Rustward]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MRG P is stop(?), not sure how much got ended. Do want to hear the results. Ouch. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

$ is the default JES2 subsystem command prefix. P means something different to JES2.

[Rustward]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoneAspen It sounds equally as disastrous as coding "DISP=(MOD,DELETE,DELETE)" in some JCL to delete a dataset. But then after running it, realizing you put it on the wrong DD statement, and wiping out several months of Purchasing/Receiving data. Not that I ever did anything like that

With the proper backups this should be little more than a minor inconvenience.

One should always assume that any disk file is subject to never being readable again.

[davemartin88]

We had a large 10 gallon (maybe larger) glass bottle used for a water dispenser that we had used to collect our change. One day, I needed a dime and when I turned the bottle on it's side to pour out some of the change, the bottle broke. Took a long time to separate the coins from the glass and clean up. The good news is we ended up with over $500 once we turned in all the coins. I now save change in a much smaller jar!

[imoldernu]

2weeks ago -Two pounds rice spilled from top shelf in pantry... still cleaning up.

1965 - Won a microwave oven when folks didn't know too much about them. In demo to DW put 6 in eggs (shells on). Opened door. They exploded. All of kitchen, and much of dining room, ceiling to floor. Brought DW to hospital (hit in eye with egg particles) for removal and wearing a patch for a week.

1957 - Brewing booze in many, many bottles and jugs in the attic of the fraternity. Three AM explosion which destroyed every single bottle and the ceilings in three rooms.

1935 - 3rd grade Honorary Inkwell Filler for the week... Overfilled Isabell Miller's inkwell... ran down desk and all over her dress, socks and shoes. So much for honor.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tinlizzy Thankfully he had shut his bedroom door so I wouldn't catch him - which is exactly what made me suspicious.

Ah, so that's how they knew. A couple of cousins and I were for a time convinced that our mothers had eyes in the backs of their heads because they always knew when we were doing something we shouldn't.