Prediction Failures and My Lucky Day from Hell

Zodiac signs and astrology with constellations, concepts, predictions, horoscopes, beliefs. Behind a circle of zodiac signs is man with his hands held around the circle zodiac signs as if it is a crystal ball for prediction.
Zodiak signs. Shutterstock Asset id: 2643593485 by Cinemanikor

Today is the first time I participate in Linda Hill’s streams of consciousness. To read about the rules and participate click here.

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “starts with ‘pre’.” Find a word that starts with “pre” and use it any way you’d like. The word I chose is “Prediction” and this post is about failed predictions. The first rule is: there should be minimal planning and no editing except typos. The picture above was what showed up in the middle when I searched “Astrology Prediction” on Shutterstock (I have an account). I picked it without looking too carefully at any other picture. As for the writing I am just letting it flow as MS Word corrects my typos for me. I already read one other person’s blog who has linked back their post, and I posted the SoCS Badge below. I hope I am getting it right.

The badge features a twig with rain drops and it says Stream of consciousness Saturday #SoCS
2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley!

My Lucky Day from Hell

These events took place in northern Sweden when I was about 14-15 years old. My dad was building a summer cabin, or rather a summer house at the time. My brother and I was helping him. Summer cabins, or summer houses, are very common in Sweden. Almost everyone has one, by a lake, a river, by the sea, or up in the mountains. He had asked me to put up a wall, and he had given me instructions for how to do it. I was determined to do a good job.

The magazines I used to read at the time had horoscopes in them and the horoscope for this day predicted that it would be my lucky day. This made me excited. I was certain I would do a great job. After all my horoscope predicted it would be my lucky day. What could go wrong on my lucky day?

I should say that I was a bit skeptical of horoscopes. They were vague and did not seem to be able to predict anything, and they certainly seemed to get my personality wrong. However, the lucky day prediction was a pretty specific prediction, so I took it to heart.

To build the wall I needed to predict how many planks to put up, and calculate the best distance between them, so building the wall involved some predictions, not the astrology kind, but the mathematical kind. I proceeded to build the wall. I predicted it would take a couple of hours. Unfortunately, it turned out my predictions / calculations were wrong. I started over but I made another mistake with my predictions and had to start over. My predictions were going wrong and I started to become frustrated. I continued to build and tear down the wall several times but on the seventh time I exploded in anger.

I randomly grabbed an axe that was lying on the ground, and I shook it and swung it around as I was running around in the yard screaming in rage. I don’t know if any of the neighbors saw me. Maybe they did and hid in a cellar or a basement. I hit the axe in a random place in the yard and to my surprise the earth swallowed up almost the entire axe. I guess I was strong.

Almost immediately water started gushing up from the ground. I had accidentally cut the waterpipe to the summer house. The waterpipe was buried in the yard and I had no idea. Water quickly filled up the yard until it looked like a shallow swimming pool. That’s when my dad came home. The wall was not finished, planks were laying everywhere, there was water gushing up in the middle of the yard, and the yard was inundated with water. He said something along the lines of “My God what happened here?”. He was angry and disappointed, and he had to call people to come and help us with the mess. It was sort of an emergency.

So much for my mathematical predictions, calculations, and so much for my Horoscope predicting about my lucky day.

I can add that I remember this incident because I recently left a comment about this unfortunate occurrence on someone’s blog. It is the first time I do this so please tell me if I got something wrong. Now it is Saturday here, so I am posting.

What about you? Have you had a lucky day from Hell?

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

35 thoughts on “Prediction Failures and My Lucky Day from Hell”

    1. My dad cut down trees with a chainsaw and then me and my brother cut up the trees into pieces of wood using an axe. We had two axes. We got at least 15 cubic meters or 530 cubic feet of cut up wood. It was for our fireplace. It lasted at least 10 years. We build a shed for the wood. In northern Sweden you don’t have to worry about termites. Axes can be quite useful but don’t cut water pipes with them.

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  4. What an awful day that was for you! And I can imagine how upset your father was, as well. Horoscope predictions are usually bullshit, and I wouldn’t give them any weight. Still fun to read, though.

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  5. It was the last screw for the last shelf after a long week of decorating, and Hubby put the drill through the central heating pipe. Turned out the pipes did not go through the wall by the skirting board as we thought, but into the wall, up into the roof, down the other side and out.
    As I was turning off the water and getting a bucket whilst Hubby had his finger in the hole, the phone rang. It was my brother in NZ asking if Hubby could talk him through installation of an electric cooker.
    He yelled SURE across the room, but asked him to help solve his water problem first. What a day!

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    1. Ouch that sounds like a bad day too. Your husband sounds like a real handyman but unfortunately sometimes that is not enough. For certain things you need a professional. We built the summer house mostly ourselves, but we had some accidents along the way. Plumbing issues, like what I caused, and electrical stuff we hired professionals for. Luckily we knew plumbers and electricians and got better deals.

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      1. Hubby is a good allrounder (my friend said to keep him as he’s useful……. he was breaking into her car at the time as she’d locked her keys in it) but won’t touch gas. He is a qualified electrician so knows his way round a fuse box!

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  6. Oh, my gosh, Thomas! What an awful day! Horoscopes can be fun, but they’re generally vague and useless. I remember one telling me it was a good idea to check on my finances. When isn’t it a good day to check on your finances? But that one LIED to you!

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    1. Thank you, Denise. It was not a good day for sure. After this I paid more attention to what horoscopes said and I noticed that whenever they predicted something specific, like in this case, they failed. Most of the time they are vague and useless though, like you said. I also did experiments like reading the personality descriptions for each zodiac sign while hiding the sign and then trying to guess which one corresponded to me. It turned out that the personality descriptions were useless and I never got the right zodiac sign. In addition, I had a friend who was born on the same day and in the same hospital as my brother and they were of totally different personalities, and they had completely different lives. Then I read about scientific studies. The conclusion was they are indeed completely useless. Horoscopes and zodiac signs tell you nothing. I ended up burning my horoscope book in a fire.

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  8. I felt your pain with this incident, Thomas. I wouldn’t classify myself as handy, but when we were first married, I tried to fix everything myself because we couldn’t afford to bring in the professionals. Sometimes I was successful, but I always knew it was taking twice as long as it probably should have. Now, I’m much more likely to hire someone.

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    1. It is similar for us. My dad was very handy and we did not have a lot of money. Now we can easily afford hiring professionals so we do. I should probably not be putting up walls. But seriously, professionals tend to do a better job than amateurs who happen to be a bit handy.

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  9. Good job with the prompt, Thomas! I could easily visualize you running around with the ax and the flooded yard. It seems to me that building a wall without supervision is a big job to give a 14- or 15-year-old, maybe unrealistic. And the ax incident probably taught you a good lesson in how not to deal with frustration. I generally have not found horoscopes to be very accurate/useful, but I used to think the personality descriptions for Sagittarius fit me, though I’m not as adventurous as I used to be.

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    1. Thank you so much JoAnna. My dad gave me instructions so it was not too difficult. The planks (inner wall) had to be turned the same way, they needed to be evenly spaced a few centimeters apart, and I needed to measure this so they all had the same spacing, and they had to be aligned exactly the same at the top and bottom. A little bit difficult but not too bad, I was just not focused enough. Regarding “And the ax incident probably taught you a good lesson in how not to deal with frustration.” That is right. Screaming and hitting things can backfire in ways you don’t expect. I learned that from that experience.

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