Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

I was late this morning for various reasons, so I abandoned the roadie in the street just before rushing in to get changed to go to work. I got out of the car and with a small deft tap of my knee knocked the car keys from my hand:-
  • One smart Roadster (Brabus 101) - £8,300
  • Fuel for one fast dash in from Herne Bay - £2.50
  • One crowbar - £4.50
  • Dropping your car keys down the drain when you're in a hurry - priceless.
Here's the picture: me lying prone in the road, with no shirt on, ear pressed to the tarmac, hand down a storm drain full of very dead leaves rummaging around 18" of stagnant water. It took me about 15 minutes to get the damn drain cover off as it was cemented in with 25 years worth of dirt and gravel. Fortunately, the dead leaves supported the weight of the keys and they hadn't sunk to the bottom - still not sure how deep the water actually was.

I was trying to imagine the conversation with the insurance people when trying to get them replaced as I was convinced that the radio alarm was now soaking wet and useless.

I opened the key fob cover and was amazed that the 20 minutes spent underwater had left the inside completely dry.

Bodywork by Swatch, key fob engineering by Mercedes-Benz.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
JANIS JOPLIN

...still got in for 9 though!
Oh, and here's a good tip - don't keep your house keys on the same ring as your car keys.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The delivery extension for this subscription could not be loaded" when using SSRS

Image
OK, so we upgraded our server farm and put on the latest "stuff" (SSRS, SQL Server etc.) and the engineers gave me two servers to play with - SQL01 & SQL02. The idea being that we used high availability to help keep the factory running. We employed a contractor to load up and configure everything. At this point I wasn't involved. My involvement was to move all the reports and subscriptions from the old servers to the new ones once the servers had been configured. All went swimmingly, until I actually started to fire off the subscriptions to test them. Randomly (like 5 out of 10) I got the error in the title. I would edit the failing subscription and/or change the schedule time and it would work. I finally got around to moving 81 subscriptions for the same report (all slightly different parameters going to about 6 different engineers). I press the "go" button and every single one failed. Let's cut out the long story about how I went through about...
Read more

Oooh, look, an Eagle...

Image
The Scottish Holiday . After the trauma of the Astra-breakdown episode and the gutless hirecar, we'd recovered sufficiently to begin to enjoy the rest of our holiday with our friends at the Castle... Chapter Seven: One of the things my wife really wanted to see was a seal, or seals if she was really lucky. So we decided to take a day out and around the Mull Of Kintyre. We stopped at "St Columba's Footprints" and carefully studied the jumbled collection of rocks and seaweed. "No seals there dear, let's carry on" "Oh, alright then, never mind. But that's where we were told they are most likely to be." We drove on and took a gated road signposted " To The Lighthouse ". This took us right up into the hills. As we were driving slowly along admiring the view, my wife whispered quietly... " Ooh, look an Eagle! " "Stop that, that's not funny." "No, really. Stop the car." ...
Read more

What else could possibly go wrong?

So. I got the new radiator hoses from Vauxhall at a stupid £45 for the two and fitted them the weekend before we were due to go away on our Touring-Trip-Of-Scotland. I used this as an excuse to get out of helping with my sister-in-law's 50th birthday party. "But, I need to make sure the car is OK for next week dear!" "OK, I'll take the smart, and woe betide you if you're late for the party!" The Astra is now in bits and has no water in it. It is 6 minutes to 12 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I know this. For some bizarre reason, I decided to test the tightness of the -ve battery terminal by gently shaking the clamp. It was loose. "Ah, I wonder if this is the cause of it cutting out last week?" I took a 10mm spanner and gently tweaked up the bolt. The lead post (as in led, not leed) offered no resistance and gracefully detached itself in its entirety from the battery, the terminal now firmly bolted to the -ve lead (as in le...
Read more