engineering

Life hands us all sorts of technical challenges, and it's up to us to solve them with our own ingenuity. Sometimes that ingenuity leads us to using a defunct school bus as a bridge, and other times it leads us to gluing a fan to the ceiling. A lot of these low budget fixes and DIY solutions are bad, unsafe and extremely unadvisable, so take that with a heaping pile of salt.

You can't fault people for their resourcefulness. But you can blame them for when their innovation is a patently stupid idea. Some ideas become OSHA enraging safety fails while others become low budget DIY solutions. It's kind of up in the air, really.

Sometimes someone comes up with a design so simple, elegant and effective that it becomes the de facto item for that use in perpetuity. It must feel good to have created something that does something the best. In the other direction, here are inventions that are now used for something other than their intended purpose.

Who needs an adequate replacement part when you have a whole bunch of junk lying around? These folks have made some bad but awesome low budget solutions to solve their problems without breaking the bank. Some of these low budget fixes and diy solutions are extremely bad ideas, but here they are.

People get very crafty with their low budget DIY solutions. It's not stupid if it works. It might be ugly, dangerous, illegal, and admittedly pretty stupid, but if it works it works. But hey, what do you do if you want a ride on lawn mower and you don't have the cash to buy one? You resort to a masterful low budget DIY solution.

Oh man, the apprentice engineer's gross level of entitlement was their ultimate undoing. If the young lad had just gone about doing business in a way that was mindful and respectful of those around him, well, then maybe he wouldn't have been ditched the 250 miles from home. Just picturing the kid having to call up his dad to come and get him at 3 in the morning, for a 500-mile-round trip is pure entertainment. 

Why would you ever buy a pan, basketball hoop or unnecessary shower head when you have a can-do attitude and don't mind having to explain your surroundings constantly. These masterful low budget DIY solutions can magically turn junk into useful items, even if they kind of look horrible and don't exactly work right. What can we say but resourceful DIY solutions have our respect.

There are wise people among us who are frugal and decent with tools. These masters of DIY solutions have our respect. And while some of us don't like the idea of using a beer can as a shower head, you have to admit that it's not stupid if it works.

We've seen stories of big company owners tripping over their own hubris, like this incompetent owner who mistakenly fired a special contractor, and this time there's more math. This guy gives an extremely detailed account of exactly how a whole bunch of water, a valve, and an overly zealous farm owner gave himself the business.

It's time for the revenge story of the week, and man, is this one a treat. This entitled sound engineer got what was coming his way. It sounds like he was just the kind of presumptuous brat that needed a wakeup call. Fortunately, the crew he worked with and generally drove insane was more than ready to give it to him. And boy oh boy, did that wakeup call come in a brutal fashion. We're talking the guy getting ditched hundreds of miles from home, and eventually having to get picked up by his dad!