Today the house keeper was vacuuming my car using a portable vac that is powered by the car’s AC power jack. I turn on the car battery so the vac would get power and let her go at it. The sound system came on as well. Instead of turning it off, I just set it to zero volume. I had forgotten that the Alpine amplifiers are Class A amps. That means they draw the same amount of power whether playing at full volume or zero volume.

When I went to drive the car back in the garage over an hour later, I found the battery didn’t have enough power left to crank the engine over. The amps have drained them! I was now stuck in the driveway. I knocked on a few doors at the other town homes in the complex to ask if they had jumper cables. They either didn’t have jumpers or they were not home.

In the end, we left the car on the driveway, took the other car and went for lunch. After lunch we ended up at Canadian Tire to buy a nice set of 16 feet long jumper cables and brought my car back to life. I must remember to have the engine running the next time I get it vacuum.