So... I don't attend this forum enough these days, so might as well make it memorable by posting a worthy achievement in the fuckwits thread.
Decided that it'd be a good idea to give the wife's somewhat aged Specialized a bit of an upgrade, which included new Shimano brakes from overseas. Noted that they were European brake lever set up, and noted that its possible to swap them over once without (hopefully) requiring a rebleed.
In my wisdom, I had worked out that it was probably easier to swap the hoses at the caliper end rather than the lever. Checked the brakes, did a test fit, saw that the levers were indeed european style. Grabbed the crow's foot hose tool, loosened off each of the retaining nuts, swapped the hoses over and retightened. Great, very little play in the levers, don't need a bleed. Checked the brakes again, hang on, lever is still wrong. Maybe it was set correctly for Australian the first time and I just looked at it wrong.
Repeated the process, held the lever up, still on the wrong side. I may have been tired at the time, because I did it at least once more before I finally realised and swapped the fucking hoses at the lever end. By this time both levers are spongey as all fuck and I've managed to get trace amounts of mineral oil all over the place.
Fuckwit.
Oh well, off to buy a Shimano bleed kit this time, knowing that I didn't have one as all my other brakes use DOT, and now I need to bleed brand new brakes with a bleed kit I don't yet have.
Double fuckwit.