Shots from The Battery

I just had one of my finest moments of personal stupidity, so I thought I’d share — if only as a warning to the rest of our friends who share my household maintenance deficiencies.

About six months ago, Di asked me to install a deadbolt on the front door, and I finally got around to the job yesterday. I’ll admit I procrastinated, mainly because I knew I’d screw something up in the process of the installation. Change the lock??? fine… but if you want the deadbolt, it could get messy. She already knows that power tools and Nate have never gotten along well.

I imagined almost every scenario of DIY dumbfuckery possible, most ending in something like:
“No, honey, those extra holes and gaping openings around the lock were in the illustrations on the instructions” or, “How much is that insurance deductible again?”

Anyhow, I went to Lowe’s yesterday afternoon and picked out a properly-suited lock and deadbolt and an installation kit for the drill. I was actually feeling pretty confident by the time I got home. After about 10 minutes of close scrutiny of the instructions, I plugged in the drill with the 2 1/4″ hole saw bit and used the plastic jig that came with the drill kit to line up the hole. Easy-peasy. I pressed the trigger on the drill, and pressed it against the door.

As the drill passed through the wood, it struggled a bit, and I noticed the lamp beside me dimming and brightening. I finished drilling the large hole in the door and quickly moved on to the smaller hole in the door frame for the bolt. After about twenty minutes, I realized that I had completed the dreaded project without losing any fingers or permanently defacing the door.

Sadly, if that was the end of the story, I wouldn’t be sharing it.

5 minutes later, I discovered that I had basically BRICKED a perfectly functional PC.

As I was cleaning up, I noticed the fairly-new media center PC in our entertainment system was emitting an unusually audible fan noise, and It sounded like all of them were going full-blast. At first I thought that perhaps it had restarted or the vibration had awakened it, but it just kept whirring away. I turned on the TV, and sure enough, the screen was displaying the dreaded “No Video Source” message. SHIT.

Despite being on a surge protector, the power flux I created with the straining drill must have fried the motherboard or processor. I’d stupidly created a series of brown-outs and didn’t even consider the fact that the entertainment center was on the same circuit!

The unit turns on, the power lights glow and the fans start spinning madly, but that is all we get.
No display, no POST bios beeps… nothing. I killed a $1000 computer to install a $50 lock.

And that, folks, is why we unplug expensive electronics when using power tools.

The door, however, now locks gloriously.