Here's one I saw some time ago but only remembered to mention here while commenting on something equally bizarre in someone else's photo post here.

I knew of (it's been a couple years, so maybe it's been relamped with ONE, APPROPRIATE color temperature by now) grocery store which was lit with 2X4 troffers in the main part of the store and 2X32 wraps everywhere else (customer service desk, etc). 

There was this random but not quite as random as you'd think mix of 6500K and 3000K.  No joke.  The front part of the store, customer service, entrance, checkstands, etc. was all 6500K, but the further back you went the more and more lights had 3000K until you got to the all-3000K back of the store.  It wasn't an abrupt change, it got random in the middle, so it wasn't like they bought out the hardware store of lamps and went systematically about it, so colors changed at one row or aisle.  I can only assume the store was once entirely 3000K or 6500K and they started group relamping but ran short on lamps and then spot relamped tubes as they went out, so as you went up and down aisles the lights went blue-orange-blue-orange-blue. 

The store had added an appliances/hardware/basic home improvement/clothing section in the next space in the strip mall it was in, accessible from the main store.  That was lit with 2X40 wraparounds, but the genius maintanance had installed all 5000K and a few 6500K F32T8 lamps, so the entire half of the store had that nasty shimmering effect, not to mention odd color temperature choice. 

Oddly, the rest of the places there had 6500K, I mean EVERYWHERE.  I'm talking restaraunts, convenience stores, gas stations, hardware stores, and whatever else.  Many places still had F96T12 slimlines, with originally all 6500K GE F96T12/SP65 75 watt!  As those died everything got spot relamped with GE F96T12/HL41/WM.  I don't think a single place on Prince of Wales Island (where this was) ever group relamped.  It was so strange.  3500K slimlines also were somewhat common, oddly enough. 

Right now :

500ft of extension cables pulled from a house to a car in a remote parking lot (helped a friend with stuck car, had to use power tools). All that under light rain

The good part : only a couple of the cables & power strips near the beginning and end of the line had the standard receptacles/plugs, which might have shorted if they gone too wet (they got wet but not to that extent). The ones in the middle were the ones i made with IEC 60309 connectors - which handled the rain well and were completely dry in the part where the pins connect

I just remembered a good one I saw.

Imagine this:  30 gallon electric water heater, twin 4500w heating elements.  Powered by #12 yellow Romex, tagged from an outlet box also powering a stackable washer/dryer.  Illegally tagged off another water heater connection from the adjacent bathroom. 

I remember the old house next door used to have an extension cord to the bathroom. It was just a thin lamp wire type cord with four outlets on the end and it was run through a hole drilled through the wall and plugged in the kitchen. Plus none of the outlets in the house were grounded because it was from the 1950s. And there was a fluorescent chrome light over the sink with a plug and switch on it anyway.

Putting a 13A plug in a live socket without its cover... Oops 

Putting a 13A plug in a live socket without its cover... Oops 

Poking bare wires into same with matchsticks 

Poking bare wires into same with matchsticks 

Been there, done that... 

I might as well write a book.

This one is All crazy, dangerous, and stupid

I got a F40T12 and F40T12 electronic ballast and hooked up the lamp and ballast to jumper cables, sounds normal well keep reading
I touched the cables where the pins where and pressed inward to the center of the tube. The tube got dimmer as I kept of squeezing the cable and as my body took most and all of the arc tube voltage. I held on to the cables until the lamp emitted little to no light

I live with no regard (also my gf hates me doing this, I got the same ballast thrown at me and then I had to comfort her for the rest of the night)

I might as well write a book.

I've done proof reading, so let me know when it's finished 

I've done proof reading, so let me know when it's finished 

I write up a journal every day, and Ria checks through it before we go off to bed. 

lol 

Walking across a field and being asked if the fence in front of us was an electric one, I touched it and was able to confirm that it was... 

Walking across a field and being asked if the fence in front of us was an electric one, I touched it and was able to confirm that it was... 

I always knew you were a nutter        

I just remembered a really extraordinary one. 

A house I'm moving into in January was built at several different times, and the detached garage was added much later.  The garage has never been finished but Mr. Handy Previous Homeowner had run power out there for the garage door openers and outlets for car engine block heaters.  The source of this power? 12/3 yellow Romex stapled to drywall and painted over in the mud room of the house, run down a trimless/unfinished door jamb in front of door hinges, then out under the hinge side corner of the lesser used side of a pair of double French doors! It then goes through a crack in the deck, where it runs along the ground and into some PVC pipe and into the garage.  Oh, so code-worthy, when two minutes with a drill through even a wood-frame basement window right adjacent to it would have made so much more sense. 

Every time I go in and out of that door working on the place I look at it and scratch my head.  I've done my fair of less than code compliant ones, but this one seems especially noteworthy.  Yes, through a door jamb, of a door that will invariably be opened and closed at times.  (At least the less used side of the pair of French doors).