07-26-2007, 12:55 AM
It's OK. I can still use the story of the development computer that kept failing at random times, but only during the week.
One of the engineers had brought in an old industrial strength cofee maker, and plugged it into the same breaker circuit. Every time we pressed 'brew' the initial current draw caused a mini-brownout, which took the computer down.
My other favourite is the people who ran instrumentation low voltage lines. Buried them 2 meters underground. And the wiring run ran under a high voltage transmission tower. They didn't understand why they kept frying intstrumentation. When I lit a neon lamp from the coupled voltage off the bare wires, they got it.
One of the engineers had brought in an old industrial strength cofee maker, and plugged it into the same breaker circuit. Every time we pressed 'brew' the initial current draw caused a mini-brownout, which took the computer down.
My other favourite is the people who ran instrumentation low voltage lines. Buried them 2 meters underground. And the wiring run ran under a high voltage transmission tower. They didn't understand why they kept frying intstrumentation. When I lit a neon lamp from the coupled voltage off the bare wires, they got it.