Stories where I repair things, often with an attempt at humor

Based on not-so-subtle Amazon reviews, many people use the small scale I own to weigh weed.

Not so for me! My drug of choice is caffeine delivered via coffee, as I’ve described. My wife fondly calls it “life blood” and the scale is an essential component to the makings of a perfect cup of east African light roast.

Naturally then, panic struck when the scale didn’t turn on one morning.

Dead batteries is always guess #1, but even with a fresh pair it wouldn’t turn on.

My wife began to search online for a new husband¹ while I considered our options. Prime same-day wouldn’t get here that morning. I don’t have time to drive to blue bottle. Should I just eyeball the amount of coffee? I’ve been weighing 46.6 grams of whole beans every morning for years straight, so one would hope I’d get decently close.²

But before submitting to the undoubtedly disastrous brew that would have resulted from even a few hundred milligrams of difference to the target amount, I took one more look at the scale.

Inspecting carefully, I noticed one of the battery contacts had fouled. Some quick sanding later and it was alive. Crisis averted.

Footnotes

1. She did not, but I found this addition funny. In reality she's incredible and testament to that is putting up with nonsense such as this.
2. This would be an interesting experiment actually, me vs other people who don't do this daily competing for the minimum mean +/- std dev of absolute difference to 46.6g across N trials using sight alone.

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This work by Derek Croote is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0