#860 – Excavate

Has this scenario ever happened to you? You have some large complicated object that becomes useless when you lose a very tiny important component. You hang on to it for years, taking up space, mocking you. You finally give up and get rid of it, 6 weeks later you put on that old winter coat that you haven’t worn in years…

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26 thoughts on “#860 – Excavate”

  1. Mophtran says:

    I love finding missing pieces after judging something completely useless without them.

    “Oh! So there’s the missing piece to the k’nex robot set I threw away 3 years ago!”

  2. C'ntarek says:

    heh… putting together my little brothers trike. SOMEHOW, in the movement of a few seconds and 5 feet, the piece disappeared. after waiting 6 months for the new part and getting nothing, i returned it to the store. a week later, my little sister is walking around with said missing piece…

  3. Space Butler says:

    I can see Biff putting his archeology skills to good use.

    @Mophtran
    Don’t get me starting on k’nex pieces appearing in every nook and cranny.

  4. Metal Matt says:

    One time my band was recording an album in my basement, and when it came time to track the guitars it turns out we were missing the one little adapter for the instrument cable that plugs into the computer’s input. We had to wait two weeks for the new one to get there. Turns out the old one was already in the back of the computer, where we had left it so it didn’t get lost. >_<

  5. SilentDragon says:

    I had one of those nifty RC cars with large tires and two sides, so you could play with them on one side or the other. It doesn’t run for long and requires long recharge, but it was still quite fun. The only problem was that one day the car vanished, literally years later I find it, fortunately I still had the controller, but the tires were permanently bent out of shape and wouldn’t take in air anymore so it was rendered useless.
    Held onto the controller for a looong time though. no missing parts!

  6. soilent says:

    Missing parts? Try Lego for once. Especialy fun when you dont understand the forces in gears and grind every and all of your cogwheels to death.

  7. Nilly says:

    ARGH! Damn you, bionicle. >__< I either lost a piece for the original blue Bionicle when I opened the case, or they never gave it to me. Either way I was never able to finish the thing.

  8. Hershey says:

    Actually, what it was for me most of the time was my big brother would break either an action figure or one of my dolls, lose the limb he broke off, then I held onto the doll for as long as my mom would allowed before she threw it away. Usually, a week after she threw it away I’d find that missing arm to Gannondwarf.

  9. baughbe says:

    The toy disappeared, the part remained…..
    Then there was the money I saved up for months for a special trip our class was taking. The day before, it disappeared and I couldn’t go – no longer having the money for the tickets and etc. About 5 years later….

  10. Chris says:

    @Metal Matt – Arrgh!

  11. MaskedMan says:

    Missing parts… Been there, done that; puzzles, models, kitchen appliances, nuclear reactors…

  12. jeremythedog says:

    i think that’s the piece i been looking for.

  13. Linzleh says:

    Having considered Borrowers, mini black holes and “hitchhiker” mice I have discovered creative or convenience ordered thinking is usually the culprit. Flashes of brilliance burn!

  14. AdmiralChaos says:

    Oh god…Sooooo many things I’ve lost that were so immensely important…
    Key examples:
    Windows XP disc…Had it on top of my desk where I knew I wouldn’t lose it for 3 years. Computer crashes one day and I can’t find the disc. A week later after I finish installing Vista (hate it, but it upgrades to 7) and discover the XP disc in exactly the same place…under another disc.
    Power cable to my 1TB external harddrive. Still haven’t found that but I bet it’s under my bed somewhere…
    Lost my wallet for almost 2 weeks one time…Driving was quite terrifying during that time. Found it in the passenger seat when a friend of mine sat on it.

  15. weerd2normal says:

    i do that all the time, i still buy lego’s, and i usually lose a piece that i dont have allready, like some new piece that just came out, and it doesnt look right if i build around it, then after i dissasemble it and throw away the instruction, i find it the next day.

  16. reynard61 says:

    @ MaskedMan: Re: models. I used to have the same problem, but my skills are advanced enough now that, depending on it’s complexity and size, I can usually just fabricate a new part out of scrap plastic or resin.

  17. Croc says:

    Oh dear lord Legos. I just saw that freaking piece 5 minutes ago when I didn’t need it…

  18. LEGO never really got lost in my house. Buried under an entire Rubbermaid tub full of other pieces, yes, but not lost.

    Or if you did lose one on the carpet somewhere, it would usually be found by someone stepping on it.

  19. Sman says:

    @ Chimera
    bet whoever finds it lets everyone know with either a curse or scream if barefoot

  20. Archemedes Rex says:

    Oh yes, the dovetail connector plate to my camera tripod. And I keep losing and finding it over and over and over.

  21. I stranglely thought it would be a good idea to put all my LEGO in one box when I was young. Big mistake. Now all I can do is play with the “minifigures”(Lego characters, you know with the specialized body and head?). 🙁

  22. sco3tt says:

    When I put something back together I don’t worry about one missing part. My criteria is, if I have less than a dozen “extra” part laying around when I’m done I call it a win.

  23. dartigen says:

    I used lose disks for stuff all the time, which is why I now keep them all in a spindle marked ‘IMPORTANT PROGRAMS’.
    As for paperwork though…I’m forever finding warranties for things I threw away, receipts from 5 years ago…

  24. Willy B says:

    When i was younger, my grandmother gave me a Lego set for Christmas. It was the biggest, coolest set ever, a Space Police spaceship that came apart into a command station (or something like that) As i was putting it together, i come to find that one piece was missing. It was a large, funny shaped wing that i couldn’t replace even with my extensive Lego collection. To this day I get sad thinking of how much fun that would’ve been had I been able to finish it. 🙁

  25. Jelellyfish says:

    I have a jigsaw puzzle I glued together, framed, and hung on my wall of a tiger. Just as we were about to put the last piece in, my mother and I noticed that said last piece was missing. It wasn’t under the puzzle, under the table, in the box…heck it wasn’t even in the HOUSE.
    When my mom found it, a few days later, it had somehow ended up in one of her gardens outside. It got hooked in her sleeve and made its way outside to rest in the dirt. Amazingly the piece was in close to pristine condition.

  26. Mr. B says:

    A visiting child hid the key to my, luckily open, fire-safe box. I bought a new one, discarded the old one and then – you guessed it – found the key in a nearby ink cartridge box.

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