The Showoff thread

Driving through the city, snowy/icy streets. Wife riding shotgun, mother in law in the back seat. We are headed to a holiday party. Looking for a house we've never been to we wind up passing it. I go to the next intersection and execute a perfect E-brake u-turn without saying a word. My wife is nonplussed. My mother in law still talks about it 20 years later.

Best I probably ever did was when one of my wife's trail riding buddies parked at our place while my wife did the tow vehicle/horse trailer thing for both of them, and when she got back, couldn't get the vehicle out of park, so she had to find another way home.

I used the manual override for the brake safety switch (googled for particulars, IIRC it was a Mercury Mariner) and it worked fine-- delivered to their driveway with instructions on how to use the override until they got it to their mechanic.  They thought I was a berkeleying genius.

BB gun story.

My grandpa's barn was infested with pigeons.    One day my younger brother was trying to shoot a pigeon with his BB gun. 

The BB's kept bouncing off, pigeons are tough birds.   So I walk up to him and tell him you have to hit them in the head.    He says "that's impossible". 

So I take the gun from him, raised it up, and popped a pigeon in the head, handed the gun back to him, and "that is how it is done".  Walked away like it was nothing.   I had no idea before that if I could pull it off.     ( To all you animal lovers, this happened over 40 years ago is our semi-rural area)

Recently playing ultimate frisbee, I had a full stretch layout diving catch in the back of the end zone for the final score of the game. That was pretty awesome.

I did a similar thing on a buddy's 91 S10 Blazer.  It kept dying and running rough.  One whack on the EGR valve and it fixed it.

I completed a 7-10 split once and turned back like it was no big deal, while i was freaking out inside 

93EXCivic said:

Recently playing ultimate frisbee, I had a full stretch layout diving catch in the back of the end zone for the final score of the game. That was pretty awesome.

Sweeeeeeet. Never played ultimate, but:

Playing disc golf in Tampa with my dad & my brothers. We step up to a short par 3 (maybe 200-250’) but pretty heavily guarded by trees. My brother is going on about how he almost aced it the week before, steps up to the tee and “SMACK” - straight into the tree about 30’ off the tee.

We’re laughing and razzing him. I’m next up. My brother smart-assedly says “Okay, then. Thread the needle, motherberkeleyer!”

I threaded the needle :) First ace with witnesses.

A few years ago, I get a call from our sister company. They're dead in the water without the band saw, which had a bolt broken off in a bearing carrier. They can't fix it, and call me for help. I go over, center punch it, and start drilling. What's left of the bolt spins out the back of the hole, and hits the ground. Elapsed time from me walking in the door to me slicking back my hair and explaining you've got to have the touch-maybe 45 seconds.

A buddy of mine asked me to come take a look at a mid '80s v8 Impala that he'd been struggling with for a couple of days. It ran pig rich and no matter what he did he couldn't get it to run right.  He'd been in the carb half a dozen times and had replaced some ignition parts in desperation and the plugs due to them fouling out. 

I walked in the shop and eyeballed the engine compartment while he told me what he'd done.  I had him fire it up and sure enough it was dead rich.  The thing sat there shuddering and stinking up the shop sounding like an old Massey Ferguson.  I grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers off the nearby tool cart, reached over and pinched off the vacuum supply hose to the canister purge valve and the idle smoothed out instantly.  My buddy slowly shook his head and lowered it down on his crossed arms resting on the fender.  I said "you might want to replace the canister purge valve", patted him on the shoulder, sauntered out to my truck and drove home.

Sadly, for me anyway, he has a bunch of stories about bailing me out.

Way back when I worked for the hotel, I spent a summer cleaning out some semi trailers the owners had been paying rent on since the early 90s. Well summertime at the hotel was pretty dead, nobody around except for employees, and these trailers were about 300 yards from the building buried in the weeds. 

I had a dumpster to fill up, and came across an old stainless bodied shop vac with a clearly broken motor. I left it sitting around for a few days to decide what to do with it. One afternoon, my dad/immediate supervisor came out to check on the progress and saw the shop vac. 

He tossed me a quarter stick and suggested we find out how high it could go.  So I added 10 seconds of fuse to the quarter stick, lit it, and flipped the shop vac body onto it. 

Sadly, it only went about 15 feet up in air, but came down with a satisfying clang right into the dumpster. Beautiful arcing flight, never could have done it if I figured out the math ahead of time. 

2 weeks later, I solved the problem of the wet floor in the breakfast bar with a bottle of food coloring. It was always the same spot that was wet, we'd had all the windows and brick checked, but nobody checked the room ACs, I put some food coloring in the drain pans, found the matching color on a ceiling tile and put an end to months of annoying complaining from the breakfast bar staff. 

Going down the expressway with a friend riding shotgun, came upon a car in the right lane with a flat. He's still going 70mph likes nothing wrong.

"that guys gonna have a real problem in about a minute" I said pointing it out.

 Backed off and in 30 seconds or so that tire shredded itself. Guy fishtailed a bit but made it to the shoulder in one piece.

The parking garage I use at work is a crappy design.  It has a narrow lane for two way traffic and people are constantly cutting the corners coming down.  Not wanting to have a head on collision with anyone I try to stay in the correct lane as much as I can, long pickups and trailer hitches make it hard some times.  Anyway, one day sitting at the light right outside of the garage a guy pulls up beside me and says " I was nice to see someone who knows how to drive in the garage for a change".  

I was getting new tires put on my wife's Merc at the Walmart by our house.  I did not buy the tires there and were having them take off the snows, put those in the back, take the wheels with the old summers out of the back, swap on the new tires and put those on the car.  One of the guys doing the work comes in to the waiting room and say they want tme to go into the shop to explain what I want them to do exactly.  I get out there, go through the spiel again and hear one of the techs saying this is going to be fun because the car has lug bolts.  I open the hatch, lift up where the spare tire is and pull out the wheel locating stud and show it to the guy.  They are all overjoyed, and bought me a coke.

Filling up at the gas station, woman pulls in behind me and can't figure out how to access her gas cap. An Infiniti if I remember correctly. Guy on the other side of the pump comes over to help her look. Searches around the floorboard and dash for a bit with no luck. Another guy comes by and they're both crawling all over the car trying to find the button or latch. Finally gives up and hollers at me if I'd knew where it was.

"Try pushing on the lid door."

This one is from maybe 10 years ago, before the proliferation of smartphones, restaurant rating apps and all that jazz. My friend was in Texas visiting his family and they decided on a Vietnamese restaurant. He's a picky eater and texts me back in California saying I'm at so and so restaurant here in Houston, asking what he should have because I'm Vietnamese so I should know what's good and what's not, right? I hopped on the PC and luckily the restaurant has an online menu, told him to have the #36, it's right up his alley. It was. He was amazed. "How did you know? Do all Vietnamese restaurants have the same menus?"

Nah man I looked it up. 
 

I work in IT.  It was my hobby that I eventually turned into my career.  Now, being in IT, I always get the "Hey, can you help me...  This is not working" calls.  Even from my wife and boys.  Problems disappear when I come over.  If I had a penny for every time a computer issue mysteriously disappears as soon as I walked  over, I would be on an island retired...

Anyway, my wife has nicknamed it "Aura"...  And my boys call it that now too.  It has gotten so finely tuned, that now all my wife has to do when she has a problem is call...

"Mike..." 

I respond "What?"

Her response: "You suck"

I walk away smiling....

Moral of the story:  Computers can smell the fear on a person who is not comfortable with computers.  Because they are networked, the computers talk to each other and let each other know when E36 M3s gonna get real.  Don't fear the computers..

My best was an e-brake parking lot drift in the snow, sliding precisely between the lines of the spot i had targeted, sideways. This was right in front of a supplier's office. The only minus? my passenger was my only witness. 

It's such a great feeling when you 'stick' your landings :)

That Civic was a blast! It was a '94 or 95 2 door, I think. with wheels from its predecessor, an '86 Prelude, so I could put snow tires on the steel rims it came with. Amazing that in a decade, the base model car has more power and as much fun with 1.5L of Japanese fury, that the older one had with 2L. 

As a varsity rifle team member in college, I was assisting the ROTC cadre with the marksmanship class.  During air pistol practice, a couple of girls I knew from high school were complaining that their Webley’s sights were way off or something.   The instructor was busy and asked me to take a look.  They had scattered shots around the target, none in the black. 

I put up a fresh target.  I checked the pistol and didn’t see anything loose or visibly out of whack.  So I cocked it, loaded a pellet, and went into the classic “stand on your hind legs and shoot like a man” one-handed target stance.    Six o’clock hold.  Breathe, relax, aim, slack, squeeze … donk.

Cleared the pistol, brought the target in.  The pellet had taken out the center of the X, just a hair from being absolutely dead center. 

I told them that I thought the sights were close enough for government work, and handed it back.

 And I refused to fire another shot all day.

I'm probably enjoying this discussion a bit too much. From my current career:

I was examining a "rabies only" (ie. quality of care limited to what is required by law), and vaccinating a little land shark of a dog while he struggled mightily to bite me.

The pet owning family found this display of aggression incredibly amusing, and great laughter ensued.

After safely concluding my examination and administration of the vaccine, said Landshark was placed upon the floor, whereupon he proceeded to go around the room lifting his leg about a dozen times. The owners watched him proudly.

This is an interesting phenomena which occurs in unneutered male dogs when suffering from what I term, "testosterone poisoning."

Since he had already pissed on every available surface in the waiting area, as well as every other spot between the pickup truck and the front door, Landshark had not a drop left in his bladder.

I had already taken note of the empty bladder, so I didn't bother to even move when he lifted his leg on my foot.

I looked down at Landshark, then back at the owners, who were obviously overjoyed at their great fortune in witnessing this amazing event.

I smiled back, while noting that there was the equivalent of only a single set of teeth among the five of them. 

"That's okay, now I know how your house smells. Paula will check you out."

 As the laughter faded, I turned and walked out the door.

I used to work for a steel bridge fabrication shop.  At the time I was probably 140 pounds, and all of the other guys on the crew were quite a bit bigger than me.  Ocassionally you have to assemble a bridge pretty much complete so you can drill some holes in their final, assembled position; stack up tolerances get to be too great otherwise.  To line up all the existing holes, you drive in drift pins which are ever so slightly bigger than the diameter of the holes you are aligning.  This becomes a real problem when a drill or punch is worn so the holes are actually undersized.  Then you're just swinging a sledge hammer at this stupid pin and it keeps bouncing out of the hole.  Well, I was coming down to the assembly area from the office, and the complaints just started rolling in.  "Those holes are undersized!  We need to get a reamer down here to make these holes right!  Blah blah blah."  I grabbed a sledge hammer and took one hefty swing.  The pin seated just like it should.  I set down the hammer and walked back up to the office.

Local Ducati dealer put on a ride night open to any brand. 

I brought my Moto Guzzi Stelvio 1200 which is pretty much the motorcycle equivalent of a half-ton truck.

A couple of the dealer riders kinda sniffed at it and looked down their noses at it but when they went over the ride route, I realised it's the area where I do a lot of my riding and I know the roads REALLY well.

I worked my way up to right behind the ride leader who was on a brand new Multistrada and when we got to some of the really twisty stuff, I started to push him to see how well he could ride that thing. Nothing dangerous, just the friendly sort of nudging we all do to each other.

We pulled in to the stop at the midway point and he wandered over and looked at my bike again and said "Umm.... You're keeping up pretty good..."

I just smiled and thanked him.