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Best and worst alchohol?

miktec

miktec

retired
Best suited to 'Off Topic' you might think ....

But - this evening I decided to swap out a desktop component and reached behind to unplug the cables ... almost knocking over a half glass of beer !! - - - eek !!

Now this isn't the first time except that usually the glass does go flying and usually heads for the computer for some sods law reason and involves a quick shut down and kitchen towel dash ... fortunately no major consequences to date.

So the question is, what's the worst hifi related alcohol spillage you have incurred - and what is the worst alcohol to spill in terms of potential damage to components/circuit boards/media/etc ... plus, what's your emergency response plan?



(re. the title - clearly had one h too many ...)
 
Thankfully never had an incident myself but my mum knocked over a full glass of wine into the keyboard of my MacBook in 2008, fizzle......pop. Her house insurance insurance paid out and I bought the new aluminium unibody MacBook 4gb ram, 2.4ghz 256gb hd. I was still using this MacBook upgraded to 8gb ram, 1tb ssd and acer 24” monitor up to last august when I treated myself to a new 27” iMac 1gb ssd and 32gb ram - quite a difference but my old MacBook still works fine and amazingly it had never shut down nor locked up at any point in the previous 12 years use. Dunno if it’s worth selling, might get £100 at best.
 
Many, many years ago daughter #2 called out that her keyboard had stopped working. I asked what she had done to it......

"Nothing, Dad. it just stopped" .....complete with "face of total innocence"

Ok, so I swapped it out for an old spare, got her back up and running, and took the defunct kbd down to the kitchen where I stood it on end by the back door, ready for the next trip to the bin.

An hour later, I was wandering through the kitchen, and noticed a thick black sludge oozing out of the kbd.

Yep, she'd spilled Cola on it.......

Washed out the cola, dust and cat hair, a week in the airing cupboard to dry out, and good as new.
 
suzywong said:
Washed out the cola, dust and cat hair, a week in the airing cupboard to dry out, and good as new.
Click to expand...

There is very little of any major consequence in a keyboard so this should work every time. It is just a question of how long to keep warm.

A friend lost their Nokia mobile a few years back - that was outside through pelnty of rain for some while (probably days rather than weeks). That was fine after drying at 40C for a couple of days - the battery had run flat and the phone shutdown and wasn't put on charge until after drying.

The only thing of real consequence in booze, in terms of damage to electrical items, is water.
 
Vinny said:
the battery had run flat and the phone shutdown and wasn't put on charge until after drying.
Click to expand...

It probably went flat instantaneously. I've dunked my phone in water twice and both times the battery went flat. One of the times the phone was only in the water for a minute at the most. Both times the phones were fine after taking apart and drying out.
 
Luckily my dad didn't have hifi or computer as he was a 'glass half full' type. Not through clumsiness nor optimism; he simply had Parkinson's. (True)
 
Coca Cola is a killer. I once had a temp job at a company supplying electrical gear for insurance claims, the favourite "I want a new video" claim was "My 5 year old spilt Coke down it". Of course this did involve emptying a can of Coke on the machine that "worked perfectly before" and letting the phosphoric acid chew it up a bit. The service guys reckoned that anything with Coke spilt in it was dead beyond all hope.
That place had any number of bent claims. My favourite was a policy holder who put in 2 claims for a split hob cooker. Claim 1 - "I dropped a pan, the halogen hob is broken". New top plate needed then. £100 excess.
Claim 2 - "My 3 year old kicked a football in the kitchen and it went through the oven door. I need a new oven". Her 3 year old must be bloody strong to put a football through a toughened glass panel. What's he called, Rashford? Anyway, new glass, £100 excess please.
So the householder who obviously was angling for a new cooker out of the insurers handed over £200 for a new hob, admittedly a few bob's worth, and a new oven door glass, which was for next to nothing. Hahahahahaha....
 
suzywong said:
Many, many years ago daughter #2 called out that her keyboard had stopped working. I asked what she had done to it......

"Nothing, Dad. it just stopped" .....complete with "face of total innocence"

Ok, so I swapped it out for an old spare, got her back up and running, and took the defunct kbd down to the kitchen where I stood it on end by the back door, ready for the next trip to the bin.

An hour later, I was wandering through the kitchen, and noticed a thick black sludge oozing out of the kbd.

Yep, she'd spilled Cola on it.......

Washed out the cola, dust and cat hair, a week in the airing cupboard to dry out, and good as new.
Click to expand...

I had a similar thing when working as a 'system support officer' in benefits admin centre, in which my responsibility was to look after anything IT or electrical. One of the admin staff claimed their keyboard had spontaneously stopped working, so I took it away to have a look - obvious signs of a recent liquid spill of coke or similar, plus crumbs and and other general unpleasant crud. Took it to bits and cleaned it out, worked fine afterwards.

Also had an incident when I was a teenager, a vase of flowers on top of the tv got knocked over (think the cat did it) and all the water emptied down the back of it. The tv was on when this happened; no bangs or sparks but first the sound went and then the picture shrank to a single thin line - a which point I got over to it to switch it off. Spent an hour with the back off it blasting it with a hairdryer, then left it for 24hrs and tried turning it back on - worked perfectly!

As far as alcohol and hifi goes, the worst I've done after a few too many is to buy stuff I don't need.
 
The only alcohol-related hi-fi problem I've ever had was that, after a certain number of bottles of vin rouge, I used to forget that CDs have to go upside down into the tray of the Beogram CD50 that was in our dining room.

It took me a while to figure out why it used to "stop working" during dinner parties but would then miraculously be fine again the next day...
 
I was sick on my box of singles at a late 1970’s kids cider party.

Missed the record player, but it was close.

I must have been 13 - 14 yrs. old?
 
Way back in an earlier life - a number of us ran a lighting rental company and we did a lot of work with Student Unions in Edinburgh.
Lighting control boards were often being returned from one of those student run clubs with problems. Luckily it was generally a rather cheap Zero88 made board but eventually we got fed up.
We took one of the lighting boards to a food testing lab who were able to confirm which "alcohol" was the culprit. Down to the variety of beer.
When we next rented the board to the student club we took a repair invoice with us. The equipment was delivered with a "shall I get a round in" from us. When one of their crew named that particular beer - we handed him the repair invoice !
 
Back in my teens a mate of mine managed to get most of a tin of condensed milk into his parents' B&O CD player.

Now I know that's not an alcoholic beverage, so I suppose you could try using half a bottle of Baileys.
 
Does putting down a glass of wine, whilst enjoying your music, to consider actually measuring the equipment count? Thankfully, the moment passed.
 
stevec67 said:
Coca Cola is a killer. I once had a temp job at a company supplying electrical gear for insurance claims, the favourite "I want a new video" claim was "My 5 year old spilt Coke down it". Of course this did involve emptying a can of Coke on the machine that "worked perfectly before" and letting the phosphoric acid chew it up a bit. The service guys reckoned that anything with Coke spilt in it was dead beyond all hope.
That place had any number of bent claims. My favourite was a policy holder who put in 2 claims for a split hob cooker. Claim 1 - "I dropped a pan, the halogen hob is broken". New top plate needed then. £100 excess.
Claim 2 - "My 3 year old kicked a football in the kitchen and it went through the oven door. I need a new oven". Her 3 year old must be bloody strong to put a football through a toughened glass panel. What's he called, Rashford? Anyway, new glass, £100 excess please.
So the householder who obviously was angling for a new cooker out of the insurers handed over £200 for a new hob, admittedly a few bob's worth, and a new oven door glass, which was for next to nothing. Hahahahahaha....
Click to expand...

Some people put their phone in a microwave to claim, it is very effective at stopping a phone from working, however all it does is flag them up to the insurance company that they are dishonest.
 
russel said:
Some people put their phone in a microwave to claim, it is very effective at stopping a phone from working, however all it does is flag them up to the insurance company that they are dishonest.
Click to expand...
Maybe so, but from what I saw in my brief time there were *so many* dodgy claims of "I was just carrying my TV down the stairs when I tripped and fell" that I doubt they can keep pace with them all. Honestly, there must have been half the claims where I thought "oh bugger off" but they paid out anyway.
 
We took delivery of a new freezer a while back. The delivery team took loads of photos as they unboxed it and put it in place. I spoke to them about it. It obviously was a way to prove delivery of the goods in good condition. So easy these days with the cameras in phones

They recounted the claim from a customer who tried claiming that they had failed to remove the transport bolts from a washing machine. The claimant was looking for flood damage and damage to the kitchen units.

While it had not been policy at the time they had taken some pictures of this delivery which included one of the bolts lying on top of the washing machine. You can imagine the response the claimant got.
 
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