Post #32 Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

Dumb, dumber, dumbest 8/28/11

Normally, the TREE for the last 8 years chronicled Garwood doings, but I have to share the complete nuttiness that transpired by my own doings. We all commit mistakes of some minor importance or another, yet with no impact, but these 3 events took place over the timeframe of 1 week 8/18 to 8/27, and left me scratching my head, or whatever melon is up there on top of my shoulders. And the odd thing is as time went by, it just kept getting worse. There comes an inflection point where you recognize that you’re not Joe Cool anymore, just some guy wading through middle age. This may be the point.

Dumb: Friday August 18- On AOL, in the email management section, one can save their own emails either on the main AOL server, or on their own PC. In 2007 I decided to start saving all my emails into my own PC. I left my old emails still on the AOL server. Well, on Friday I decided to transfer my various folders, which were still full of single emails, from the AOL server to my own PC. I won’t go into the process, but there’s a lot of clicks involved. The first folder transferred perfectly and then I subsequently deleted it from the AOL server. It was a minor folder, had a couple of emails in it. I then attended to the second folder which was a large folder with about 200 emails, all fairly important, but for some reason it did not actually transfer. But I thought it did and so I proceeded to delete it from AOL's server. After the deletion, I noticed it wasn’t on my PC. I searched around then panicked and contacted AOL via live help. That was in the span of 20 minutes. Unfortunately, for a half hour she tried a lot of different things but could not recover anything. We ended the help dialogue with the fact that once its off the AOL server, there is no back up even for a minute. Learned? --That I should transfer everything first and then delete it all at the very end instead of one at a time. Keep that in mind those who still are using AOL. Dumb.

Dumber: Monday, August 22nd- The county govt. and its utilities authority is refinancing 1 of 3 major bonds for the incinerator in Rahway. Via OPRA from the county I received amortization tables in an unsearchabble PDF format, so I opened up an excel sheet to plug in the numbers with the other 2 Authority bonds to weigh the validity of the refi. I had to hand type in all 3 bonds into the XL. After I was done typing and analyzed the numbers, I was concerned that the bond was similar to a ballon mortgage with huge back end payments. So I right clicked the xl tab and renamed it and saved it on my desktop. I then emailed it to the county freeholders with questions on the validity of the refinancing. I then received an email from one freeholder pointing out I also had sensitive info in the same XL I emailed. When I looked at what I saved, sure enough, along with the tab on the bond refi, were other tabs containing my Christmas list, phone numbers and even my insurance, EZpass and bank account policy numbers. Here’s what happened: I used an existing personal XL booklet on my desktop, and just opened a new XL sht tab for the refi. Pretty lazy. I then thought if I just right click on one of the tabs I could save it as a separate XL book. But all I did was save the existing book with all its tabs under the new name: county bond refi. At the next freeholder meeting at the mike I apologized for putting the freeholders in the uneasy position of receiving my personal info. Learned?—that I should open a fresh XL every time or at least don’t commingle info that shouldn’t be commingled. Dumber. Then I remarked to my wife that I thought my idiocy was done.

Dumbest: Friday/Saturday August 27th- This one takes the cake. With hurricane Irene bearing down on us, I have a brook in the back yard. My sump pump which the previous owner put in the basement was just a big hole punched through the basement floor slab, and a square VCT piece placed in the hole to hold the sump pump. Between the floor opening and the VCT wall, is an interstitial opening and there occasionally has been water coming up through it onto my floor. With the hurricane I knew the water would definitely appear and also may worsen if the power is lost. So I bought some concrete mix to fill the interstice. I started to remove the sump pump so I could work around it. First I bumped the float to make sure the pump worked. It worked. I proceeded to mix the concrete in portions, and at the same time working to lift up everything on the basement floor up to a higher level just in case the power is lost to the pump. I finished both arduous jobs, and went upstairs. My wife asked me if I tested the pump when I was done. I told her I couldn’t because if I put water in the sump it may wash away the fresh concrete but not to worry I checked it before I started the project. As we all know hurricane Irene hit during the night. The next morning when I woke I looked in the basement and there was 2 feet of water. I was shocked, and assumed the power was lost. That was when my neighbor said the south side never lost power. I waded into the water to the sump pump in the corner and looked at it. In plugging the pump cord back in, there was also an extension cord plug hanging down near the same electric outlet. It was that one I grabbed and plugged into the outlet instead of the sump pump cord plug! @!!!!@#!! I switched plugs and the sump pump got rid of the water in 2 hours. So I probably could have avoided the whole watery mess I now face this week. Learned?- Listen to my wife and occasionally check things during any prolonged crisis. Dumbest!

Well, I ran out of superlatives so I hope I ran out of dumb things to do in the future. (but I doubt it.)