Awesome, I'm An Idiot

It's always a little embarrassing when you find out that you have been doing something wrong for an extended period of time. Now, most of the time it turns out to be a minor issue and pretty amusing, like finding out you've been singing the wrong song lyrics for years. But then there are the other times, when turns out that you've been doing something very wrong and you're lucky you aren't dead as a result of your stupidity. Yesterday the latter happened for me. I had to give my brother's truck a jump-start at a nearby Dunkin Donuts. I rolled up, popped my hood and hooked up the jumper cables. I gave the other end to my brother's friend who was standing nearby and watched as he put the positive cable to the positive battery tower and clipped the negative cable onto a metal part of the truck. I was about to say something about that appearing to be wrong, when my brother turned the key and his truck roared to life.

I always though you were supposed to hook the positive and negative cables on both batteries. Turns out that only the positives should be hooked up and the negative cable for the car with the dead battery should be grounded to a metal, non-painted part of the car. The reason you do this is so the battery won't explode. Somehow the fact that this could happen never reached my ears, cause I'm pretty sure I would have remembered it. The word "explosion" is one I always pay attention to. Even if it is a very small chance of it happening, given my luck with cars it is probably not something I should be chancing. (By the way, I usually believe that people make their own luck, so I'm becoming increasingly convince that my "bad luck" with cars is a result of my own lack of knowledge of what the hell I am doing.) So, on the one hand I learned something, but on the other I'm still an idiot.

-You know who else is an idiot? Tiger Woods' caddie, Steve Williams. Williams has a pretty sweet gig; carrying the bag, telling people to shut up and providing some minor security for Woods as he walks around the course. He never looks like he is giving Woods much in the way of actual golf advice or helping him read putts - he just gives him the distances and lets Tiger do his thing. For this he gets 10% of Tiger's considerable winnings and a couple of his own sponsorship deals because Woods is on camera so much. As coattail riding jobs go, it's up there. Therefore, I found it curious that he would criticize Woods in any way, but that is what he did yesterday on an New Zealand news show, stating that if he had known about Woods' affairs he would have said something and put a stop to it. I know Woods isn't having the best of years and he needs to get as much good publicity as he can, but I highly doubt Woods wants his caddy weighing in with any criticism. Tiger is still a control freak who wouldn't want his caddy to suddenly appear to be the moral compass Tiger didn't listen to. Williams has a reputation for being rough with fans and it wouldn't take much for Tiger's people to use that as an excuse for getting him a new caddy. Williams would be wise to not rock the boat and mess up the sweet job he has.