My wife comes in yesterday arvo and says "I found this in the garden", handing me my Thermapen.
Rage increasing.
There is clearly moisture inside the LCD after the bout of overnight rain. I swing the probe in and out and... nothing. Dead. Quickly I remove the battery cap and check the batteries. A few drops of water come out in the process. Rage increases further. After going passive-agressive at my 4 year old son who looked guilty as sin as soon as he saw the Thermapen, I got the hair drier onto it and tried to dry it out. Moisture was escaping from the rubbers and when I swung it, a few ml of water dripped out of the battery opening. In vain, I put the batteries back in and tried again and as suspected, zilch. I left it in the sun for a few hours and overnight until it was totally dry and same again - nothing.
I kind of broke down internally and accepted it. I'm building house at present and we have a lot of costs coming up apart from the house. Fences, letterbox, hoses, back deck, concreting, shelves etc. and so we don't have much cash spare. If the kid broke something necessary (like the toaster, microwave, window or somesuch) I could deal with it because it would have to be replaced. It would cost, yes, but I would buy a new one. There are a few things in my life though especially in the brewery that are luxuries. I don't need a $130 thermometer, but I got one for my birthday. It's brilliant. I use it every time I brew and ferment and it's handy for cooking as well. However if it's broken, life will go on without it and it's just something nice that I don't own any more. There isn't a good reason why, but it was something nice I have that keeps me happier and now I don't have it. It was a bit depressing but I'll get over it, and at the same time bloody frustrating because I've warned the said child not to touch my expensive Thermometer. **** started to get real for him when I implied I might take some money out of his moneybox to buy a new one.
I thought about it a bit and figured it's all electrics, maybe the water shorted out the batteries. I took a gamble and bought some spare batteries ($9 wtf). Before putting them in I noticed the cover has a small notch on it that pushes a switch inside that must act as a kill switch. Holy crap, all this time I've been trying it with the cover off! I put the cover on and... nothing. One last chance, I swapped the batteries over and gently opened the probe.
POWER.
I fist pumped a little even though the display wouldn't read the bottom line. Oh well, not an issue especially if the temp's 71.1 or whatever. To test if it was still calibrated I took it outside to my keg fridge to cross-check it with the STC-1000 I'd calibrated off the Thermapen. The probe had fallen out of the cup in the fridge and the water had actually iced over at the top. Ooooh, lucky I checked. I broke the layer of ice off and measured the temp to be 0.1°C. Freakishly accurate.
So today has been a good day.