All I'm going to say
is that I'm employed as a Website Programmer.

I never actually learnt HTML, I have no concept of Javascript, Flash, ASP, PHP or any other language.

I know how to use Dreamweaver though.

But only through playing with it. Never actually read anything about it.

Still...
(deane1980 - I wasn't working at:, Fri 5 May 2006, 14:19, Reply)

"wear safety glasses whilst using this soldering iron at all times"
Nah.

Don't need to wear safety glasses, do I?

I was soldering two pieces of wire together, when i accidentally moved one of the wires, causing the other one to flick up, and with stunning accuracy, catapult hot solder into my right eye.

One trip to Manchester's Eye Hospital later, thankfully it had just slightly scratched my eye so all I needed to do was use some eye drops for a while. Didn't have to wear an eye patch.

Have I learnt my lesson? You bet.

I don't do soldering any more. ;)
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Fri 5 May 2006, 14:02, Reply)

Banned from Chemistry
The final straw was "Stop messing about", "don't light the ethanol", etc.

Me and Darrell, for t'was his name, decided to pour a bottle or two of ethanol over 4 desks and turn on the gas to the gas tap - NOT the bunsen, you understand..... We then lit the ethanol from the other side of these desks.

Oh how we laughed as the flames leapt from one end to the other.

Oh how we cringed as we remembered the gas tap thing that we'd done.

Oh how we stood open mouthed following the "woof" and the desk flames and the shooting gas tap and the fire alarm and the girl whos jumper we set alight...

We were summarily thrown out of Chemistry and banned - which was inconvenient as I wanted to do it at GCSE (funnily enough it turns out Chemistry's really hard and I'm glad I didn't take it now!)

/random!
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:57, Reply)

more bunsen-related hilarity...
We were in Year 6 (about 10-11 years old, I think), and using bunsen burners for the first time.

One lad, called James Coward (I think, it was a long time ago) was too excited to listen to the teacher telling us to turn the gas off if the flame goes out.

He was so excited he did the experiment to evaporate salty water to leave just salt, and then blew his flame out. Just so he could listen to the hissing sound the gas made. Bear in mind that this was a laboratory with about 25 burners dotted around the place. All burning away merrily.

After about 30 seconds, he got bored. He wanted more fire. The following exchange occured:
JC: "Sir, do you have a match?"
Science Teacher: "Why?"
JC: "My flame's gone out"
ST: "when?"
JC: "errrrrr about a minute ago"
ST: "oh...ok". *thinks* "you did turn the gas off at the wall, didn't you Coward?"
JC: "eh?"
ST: "did. you. turn. the. gas. off?"
JC: "errrrrr no sir. Was I meant to?"
ST: "EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE BUILDING. NOW!!"

He turned the gas off at the mains, and made us run behind a wall and crouch down. Then guess what happened?

Fuck all.

Proving that not listening to instructions didn't result in any death whatsoever.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:55, Reply)

Tablet to be swallowed with water....
Having acquired a sleeve of nice, strong viagra from my father (cheers dad) and tried them out on the girl i was seeing in Manchester at the time (that was a great couple of nites), i returned to an unusally narcotics dry Canterbury.
Cue Friday nite sitting in with uni chums, no mandy, no charlie chang and no mary-jane....bugger! What are we going to do?

"Well i've got some Viagra, why don't we crush it and snort it?"

5 minutes later and 4 drugs cats (2 girls and 2 boys) kneel round the house mirror with a nice, semi-crushed line of concrete cock capsule in front of each of us.
I roll up the fiver (poor students) and bosch the line in one, what was the best i could hope for? Well, if you've ever been sprayed in the face with CS gas just take away the sensation of your skin burning off you face and transfer that to the back of your throat.

What did i learn from this? Stick to snorting things that you buy from dodgy dealers instead of 'safe' precription drugs. And no, my nose didn't go hard!

I did manage to mask the pain from my friends (apart from the watering eyes) until they all too had dispatched with their doses!

I guess you could compare what happened next to the scene in Withnail and I when Withnail drinks the lighter fluid apart from there were 4 of us trying to reach in our mouths and scratch our throats!
(crispyshark, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:51, Reply)

Ooo, bunsen
I blew my bunsen burner out - having been told that "if it goes out blah blah blah" - I wasn't listening.

Left the gas on for what seemed like ages - I was sat a good few meters away and struck a match....

WOOF!

And lo, the bunsen was lit.

Erm, I was thrown out of the classroom.....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:51, Reply)

Hot....
On taking a friend for his first 'proper' Ladypool Road balti, I warned him that he shouldn't touch the balti dish when they brought it out as it would be FUCKING HOT... so of course, first thing the prick did when they put it down in front of him was not just to touch it.. oh no, he had to go one better, he grabbed hold of the handles and picked it up off the table.
In the half second or so it took the pain to reach his brain he had a kind of triumphant 'yeah. right, hot you say?!' look on his face... it was rapidly replaced by a look of pain and horror, and he shrieked like a girl and dropped the searing hot bowl in a serious hurry.
Needless to say, he got no sympathy at all, and I was delighted to see that he had a lovely curved row of white blisters on thumb and forefinger of both hands, the bloody muppet.

Scarily enough, this fool went on to become a psychiatrist...
(Captain Happy, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:40, Reply)

Ignoring instructions, procedure, the rules...
I used to work as a volunteer in a community centre, teaching drama to kids. The rules on what you can and can't do with kids are incredibly strict - we were instructed not to touch them, be on our own with them, etc.

We were having our end of term party, and one of the kids had brought in a caterpiller cake (with smarties on and boggley eyes - it was really cool). We didn't have any cutlery, so I dispatched one of the kids to the kitchen to fetch a knife - on her own, as it doesn't take 2 people to carry a knife.

When one of the 'proper' staff found out about this, she went absolutely ballistic. Not because the kid was carrying a big sharp knife, but because to get to the kitchen, she had to walk through the reception area and back, and was thus ON HER OWN with the receptionist for about 3 seconds each way and 'anything could have happened' (WTF??). She threatened to report me and wrote it in the incident book.

The funny thing was, when I took 14 kids on a field trip and managed to return with only one, no-one batted an eyelid.
(Pachey, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:38, Reply)

How I got my first gutworm
Recently-ish, the council decided that the six square feet of playing area that the kids in Coventry are allotted needed to have something added to it, so they built a sort of shallow water pool that would spray water into the air in the summer.

Anyway, for some reason they shut it down, and some friends and I decided to play in the stagnant water that had collected at the bottom of the pool, despite it being fenced off with warning signs saying stuff like "Do not enter - harmful intestinal parasites in water".

By golly they were right.
(Pagey, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:23, Reply)

Chemistry - so fun!
I did chemistry for A level and had alot of fun. alot of the course was practcal and being a total non-experimental kinda girl, really did fuck up most of them. i'm not a nerd but really enjoyed the whole course, probably cos my class was awesome and my teacher was cool and i had alot of fun.
1. my friend sian, was told to TURN OFF THE BUNSEN BURNER as soon as the ethanol starts to boil, and i mean as soon as. sian's happily pretending to be oh im the brightest person in the class when someone calls her, she turns round the second her ethanol starts to boil. cue teaacher "sian! turn your flame off"
sian: "whaaaaat?"
teacher: "now! quickly!"
sian: "oh, umm, oops umm"
bang. glass shattered, sian red faced. stupid slag girl screaming, teacher shouting. fire alarm goes off and class is evacuated, he wouldn't even let us take our bloody gloves off so we had to go line up with the rest of the school with bloody safety gloves on....we looked like right nerds!
2. rhiannon, what a complete and utter idiot.
tecaher: "don't forget to put the top back on the conc. ammonia bottle"
rhiannon "forgets"
me: sir, what's that smell? smells like wee.
rhiannon got shouted at haha.
3 omg, this is the best i promise. me and a "friend" were conducting an experiment which involved a bunsen burner. ours was seriously dodgy. poured substance into pipette blah blah etc etc. anyway, i noticed some clear liquid on the desk, thought it was water. it was bloody ethanol. friend lights bunsen burner, bunsen burner shoots off the tap and flame falls onto the desk, desk goes up on flames. me and friend stupidly tried to blow the desk out, then i realised my hair was loose.
me: oh my god! my fucking hair is on fire!" and what went through my mind? stop, drop and roll. so i did....infront of a WHOLE class of staring yr 11ers.
teacher: catherine, what are you doing on the floor?"
the fire had gone out when my freind had turned off the gas.
silly me.
(CathT, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:18, Reply)

I worked at a theatre company...
and one of my duties was to hold cue cards, you know, with actor's lines and whatnot on them for the gits too lazy to learn theirs.

Anyhoo, I was instructed to type them up myself one week, and cue me overusing the word cue on the cards (cos I'm like that) and cue me getting fired.

Cue me actually learning how to spell it.

Qu? Que? Cu? Kew? Queue? Damned if I knew.
(Stu Moo winner of five nobble piece prizes, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:15, Reply)

Fart Button
I pressed the fart button and was immediately inundated with a multitude of popups, spyware and killer viruses. Next my email address was added to every spam list in the world. Now thats a surprise.
(jimbobaggins, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:11, Reply)

Similarly to Albert TMD down there,
I ignored the chemistry teacher's "agitate gently", but obeyed my mate's "put your thumb over the top and give it a shake"...

Orange acid all over the shop. Melted the lab coat (you'd think they could make lab coats that didn't melt). Up my nose too - bloody hell that stuff stings. Had nice round holes i nmy trousers too.

Also ignited the desk once. Melted thru the testtube. But thats for the Fire QOTW really.
(RowdsterDelux, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:09, Reply)

While working at my desk
I say working loosely, because I try not to, a work collegue fell over and spilt coffee all down there front. We all laughed.

Nothing to do with the qotw but I ignored it

(probably been done already)
(B3any_pants, Fri 5 May 2006, 13:05, Reply)

Oooh, thankyou very much.
Currently I'm ignoring the instruction on the free chinese calendar a drunkard Mr Wow brought home (you know the look. Drunk men and cats do it. 'Look what I have killed for you, after my hard night foraging'- could easily have been a beermat or a taxi card) from an eat-all-the-MSG-you-like-lardarse places. It says 'Enjoy newly taste fresh gifts for you', and I'm not enjoying it in the slighest.

I'm glad it's fresh though. I wouldn't want an over-ripe calendar.

Hah! Lengthless (almost) and girth lite.
( Captain Wow currently being a cunt in Infamous, Fri 5 May 2006, 12:57, Reply)

GCSE Chemistry
Apparently, we were told not to shake the test tubes.

I guess my hearing must have been faulty, as I stuck my thumb over the top and gave the tube a vigourous jiggling. The caustic aluminium solution inside immediately began to froth up - but my thumb was still tightly pressed over the top.

This resulted in a high-pressure spray of toxic silver gunk across friends, desks, floor and exercise books alike, and a subsequent angry telling-off from the teacher about how I was lucky the chemicals hadn't wreaked some horrible vengeance on my skin for their premature agitation...
( Albert the Mildly Deranged purveyors of nothing much since a year or two ago, Fri 5 May 2006, 12:33, Reply)

Splattered Ceiling
Chemistry class, A Level practical exam.

We were supposed to find the boiling point of some compound that we had created and then had to seal them in little tubes.

Alex (for that is his name) missed out a step in the process, rendering the compund flammable. When he plunged his glass capsule into the oil bath it shattered, with the contents spilt and it started to burn atop the oil bath. Then like a scene from a cartoon there was an almighty 'whoosh' and the oil bath shot upwards due to the pressure in the large test tube it was held in, and it splattered the ceiling and little pools of flames were burning.

Needless to say, the whole building was evacuated and the fire brigade arrived. Teacher went back to Practical Exam Backup plan B- Titration.

Even then Alex managed to shatter his pipette, spraying acid all over the bench and burnt this great big hole in his labcoat by his crotch.

What a twunt.

I think he went on to do Chemistry at some backwater poly-cum-uni thing...
(Marmoset Bored bored bored of cnuting revision..., Fri 5 May 2006, 12:30, Reply)

No user serviceable parts within
Attempting to insert additional RAM into a poorly made Middle Eastern computer, I needed to get underneath the box with those immortal words...

"Do not open - no user serviceable parts within"

Unable to release the box from its moorings, I instead decided to take it apart and reach through it.

Chip installed, I plugged my creation into the mains

*on*
*BANG*
*pfft*

The first and only time I have seen a real-live mushroom cloud (albeit only 3" across).
(breakfastwithjam, Fri 5 May 2006, 12:00, Reply)

Twinkley Lights
At the time I was 10 and I had just received a new present from my mother a couple of months before that came in the form of a lovely sister (although after when she started talking I kept making enquiries if she could be sent to an orphanage because she was seriously pissing me off, but that's another story). I wanted to make her very first Christmas a memorable one so when my mother was out with her at the doctor's I decided to put some fairy lights up around the house.

I was living in the Far East at the time because my father got transferred there for a job and as a result the only fairy lights we had were those from 3 Christmas's ago, and these were antiquated fuckers that didn't have their own transformer or plug or whatever the fuck that makes them work, just a little dongle that had two copper spots that looked like it fitted into a bayonet light bulb holder. So, off I went to look for a lamp base where I could plug these into. Found the most suitable size that happened to be one of those old Black Tower bottles converted into a lamp base and unscrewed the resident light bulb and directly plugged it in. Bear in mind that it said 'DO NOT PLUG DIRECTLY INTO SOCKETS, USE TRANSBLAHBLAH', but no, 10 year olds know everything.

As soo as I plugged them in I felt a massive jolt and my hand was glued to the bottle base and I flew arcoss the room, unplugging the lamp in the process. My mother came back 15 minutes later to find me on the floor, clutching a Black Tower bottle for dear life and a string of (fused) fairy lights and the smell of singed hair emanating from me. Not a pretty sight.

I was smacked to within an inch of my life by my very livid mother, who kept telling me I could have killed myself.

And she very nearly killed me...
(Marmoset Bored bored bored of cnuting revision..., Fri 5 May 2006, 11:52, Reply)

just say no
grange hill's crusade against drug taking. they might as well have said take as many drugs as you can...did they not realise that if you tell kids not to do something, they will do it twice as hard?!
(Jazz Bloke Music has charms to soothe the savage breast, Fri 5 May 2006, 11:48, Reply)

dont run in the house!
When me and my sister were only little we used to fight non stop. I would chase her round the house after she had tried to hit me. Eventually mother would scream "stop running in the house!" followed by her smacking me round the head. (Apparently it was always my fault).

Then on one fateful summer evening it happens again, my sis hits me round the head and I get up and start to chase her ready to give her a damm good thrashing. As she runs into the kitchen she runs straight into a bin liner that has a broken milk bottle in. Cue screaming that almost bursts my eardrums and more and more blood pumping onto the floor. The cut was so deep on the top of her foot that the skin flapped open in a neat triangle so that you could see all of the bones and tendons in her foot.

Later in hospital she hit the doc stitching her up and burst the sutures so there was blood everywhere again

Since then she has cracked her skull going down a hill in a forest on a bike with stabilisers and impaled her foot on a nail in the garden. It went right through her foot.

I have come to two conclusions. 1. Always do what your mum tells you, that way you avoid blood and screaming. 2. My sister is one clumsy bitch.

No apologies for length.
(THE_TRUFFLE_PIG, Fri 5 May 2006, 11:29, Reply)

Never...
...smoke a cigar, then re-apply a contact lens that has fallen out.

Nicoteine(sp?),Finger,Contact-Lens,Eye,Pain
(Dr_Faustus filius of a femina canis, Fri 5 May 2006, 11:17, Reply)

instructions
In a Science lesson at school once. The lesson was on 'Forces', and the teacher had set up a practical exercise. She had split up the class into groups of 4, and supplied each group with a bottle of washing up liquid.

"See if you can open the washing up liquid, without touching the lid, using your knowledge of forces."

The other groups discussed at length how to solve the problem. Everyone was somewhat confused, apart from me. I placed the bottle on the floor, and stamped on the side as hard as i could.

*SPLAT*

Green liquid was plastered all over the floor, the cabinets and up the wall on the new blinds of the Science lab. The class fell silent. Forceful, eh?

I got my first afterschool detention on that fateful day, and was forced to return to the crime scene to assist the teacher in scrubbing the Fairy goodness from the walls of her beloved lab.

No fucker else got the bottle open, I should have got an A+! bitch
(Carling, pint of, Fri 5 May 2006, 10:50, Reply)

Actually reading the instructions.... (pointless)
While backpacking in South Africa I'd become a delicacy for the local flying carnivores who feasted on my hands as mozzies or whatever do.

SO, I decide to avoid getting any weird infections that may result in my arm turning black and dropping off I should go buy some Savlon or similar.

Being familiar with Savlon I applied the cream and was happy but on a long boring bus journey began reading anything including instructions on Savlon...

I can only assume there are some fucked up people in South Africa as printed on Savlon tube was the wording "Do NOT apply directly to brain".

Yeah! Like my skull is open and my brain is exposed "A little bit of savlon will clear that right up!" is what I'd be thinking...

Incidentally, among other things I noticed:
On a tin of Ham, "minimum 20% meat". So if it's labelled as Ham what is the other 80%? Scary stuff.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 5 May 2006, 10:38, Reply)

friends do know best
A couple of times I should have listened to the instructions of mates to stay away from some bird, but when pissed who knows best?

Not me thats for sure, took about 6 months to escape one of them and that was after breaking the cardinal rule of never ever ever sleep with a housemate, at the beginning of term then having to put up with the dozy cow for the rest of the year.

Oh and done the one about not opening a radiator cap especially after a 950 fiesta was doing over 100 on the M6, face looked like freddie kruger for about a month afterwards and can still taste the shitty radiator water ten years later.

Don't run with your hands in your pockets said my parents when I was about 6, fine but my hands were cold and the inevitable trip led to a cracked skull, still I've never done that one since!
(inkworm, Fri 5 May 2006, 10:36, Reply)

Thermometer
"Do not put that thermometer in the bunsen flame"

Curiosity always gets the better of a 12 year old doesn't it?

**Bang** - mercury all over the chemistry lab and the kid that needed a quick trip to casualty.

/crap
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Fri 5 May 2006, 9:52, Reply)

Vehicle engines...
Ex husband was grumbling that our van engine was steaming.

I had already been advised that a core plug was leaking, possibly corroded, so it was best to let the engine cool down before looking at it as core plugs can blow out like bullets, releasing red-hot steam.

After explaining this I was about to go off for a brew, but Ex still wanted to argue about it and he decided to investigate personally.

I turned back just in time to see him open the bonnet and lean in close to the engine.

BANG! The core plug blew out, followed by the scalding steam.

The ex ran off backwards clutching his face and I collapsed on my knees with laughter.

Sickness, health, yup, richer, poorer, yup, stupider, nope.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Fri 5 May 2006, 9:24, Reply)

I was on a singles website
And ticked the 'accept terms and conditions' box without reading them.

Thus I completely missed the instruction "by contacting anyone on this site, you accept that having sex once is worth being dragged into a vortex of someone else's mental illness."
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 5 May 2006, 9:24, Reply)