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10 Computer Mishaps
Ant writes "ZDNet UK posted Ontrack Data Recovery's 2004 list of the 10 strangest and funniest computer mishaps... Some of them are funny!" My best mishap was installing the alpha video driver on an NT 3.51 box thinking that it was just an alpha driver. Of course since this Alpha meant DEC and this was an x86 box, the server barfed pretty hard. Also the time I spilled an 8oz glass of water on my laptop and lost all my email from 1994 to 1999 and my backup was corrupted. That I liked too.
Hey, freezing a broken hard disk works, really, just don't do it like this.
These really aren't very good but hopefully people will send some better ones in.
My personal ones:
A friend in the office had to install identical 2 machines with linux. Step 1: Install linux on one machine. Step 2: Install the hard drive from other machine into the computer. Step 3: 'dd' one disk over to the other one. Step 4: Scream as you did it the wrong way round and overwrote your newly installed disk with blank disk garbage.
On a server I needed to remotely manually replace libc with an older version file from another machine. Ofcause you have to remember to do everything in a single command otherwise if you delete the old version you cannot run anything else. (I am sure there must be a simpler solution to that than take the disk out and do it on another machine)
Leaving a computer under the desk but pushing it back as far as it would go so the back board of the desks fully covered the fan hole. It got very hot after a day and then burned out the cpu and powersupply in one go.
Inserting a K6-3 into an older board which I didnt want to replace. The board had jumpers with markings for the CPU voltages 3.1, 3.0, 2.9, 2.8, 2.7 and followed by 2 unlabelled jumpers. The chip wanted 2.6v core supply (I cant remember the details) so foolishly I assumed the other two jumpers were the lower voltages for which there were no processors at that time. I was wrong and a puff of smoke appeared as my lovely new 450MHz executed its first and only operation.
Checking if the IDE cable worked itself loose without moving the computer from its place and leaving it turned on. So I am reaching round the side and blindly feeling around for the cable and I suddenly feel something like an electric shock (which turned out just be accidentally touching the cpu fan blades). I very quickly remove my hand snagging it on one of the many sharp pieces of metal sticking out of old cases. It was quite cool to be able to see my muscles moving around as a huge piece of skin flopped open exposing the tendons in my hands.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
One man became so mad with his malfunctioning laptop computer, he threw it into the toilet and flushed a couple of times.
It must have had problems dumping his log file. It was probably stuck in the backside cache...
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
Not to sound like a miserable bastard, but exactly which of these are supposed to be funny? This article is really lame, uninformative and about as funny as colon cancer.
/. going downhill>
The first item on the list takes the piss out of some guy for putting a HD in the freezer in an attempt to get it to work, when that is well known for sometimes working in temporarily resuscitating dead drives, if the death is due to a mechanical fault.
Also, the link for page two seems to keep taking me back to the first page in Firefox.
<insert misc comment about
Bah. Humbug.
Remember that time when Taco tried to revamp the slashdot login system and none of the stories had comments for like half a day? Ahhh, memories...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
This is a Commodore 64 user I knew. He got around to reading some computer books, and remembered the phrase "you must format a diskette before you use it". Guess what he did first when he decided to use a commercial program that was on a diskette?
Beer and keyboards don't mix. I spilled nearly a pint on mine and its tough working with it now. I won't give it up because its one of those old IBM keyboards and I just love it. But man its tough typing without arrow keys, a backspace and some letters. Reminds me of that Simpsons bit:
Marge: You know Homer, the "E" doesn't work on that typewriter
Homer: We don't need no stinkin' "E"! Ok, "Food Box: Go or No Go" by Homer..no, Earl..no, Bill Simpson!
Delete from Users; where ID=1;
Fleur de Sel
I really would have expected Taco's story to be about "the one time we updated Slashdot..."
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
How could I forget yesterday so quickly? Do we really have that many Memento-style disabled Slashdotters?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
One day, frantic call from my friend: "can you come with me to $AIRPORT, $AIRLINE's mac is down (I was the Mac expert then). Seems that $AIRLINE is running it's whole fleet management software on ONE computer.
We get there, and the VICE-PRESIDENT OF FINANCE is waiting for us at the receptionist desk. He hands my friend a $50,000 cheque!!! We go look at the macintosh, and I cannot do anything, the hard-disk is totally molten...
We get out of the airport and rush to the bank to have the cheque certified.
The next day, $AIRLINE filed for bankrupcy...
When I was 12 or so I bought a 2400 Bps internal modem for my Compuadd 486 SX25.
:)
I had no idea what I was doing so I called up the Hayes support line. I told the support guy I wanted to install my new modem but needed help.
He asked me if I had my computer's case off, to which I replied yes. He then told me to go ahead and plug the modem into one of the free slots.
Zap! OUCH! Poof!
He neglected to tell me to turn off the computer.
Hey, I was 12... leave me alone.
For those of you who are worried, some how, both the computer and the modem survived and I eventually got it installed and working.
While working outside on my laptop in Key West some kids scared up the wild rosters that live there. Airborne and over my laptop he shat a full on metric ton of bird juice onto my laptop.
I was cleaning roster shat out of my keyboard for the next 2 weeks. Smelled good as well. At least it was not in my beer I guess.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I don't know about that article being funny, but I knew a guy in colleg who woke up to a random dude pissing in his keyboard. I'm not sure if the keyboard was ruined, but I do know that it was trashed (much like the random dude). Cops were involved and the guy ended up having to buy a whole new system for my friend. So if you're in college and you're not locking your dorm room door, you might want to put a towel or something over your keyboard at night.
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
Having your webserver shine briefly in the ultraviolet range before slumping in a heap of molten slag because you got linked on the front page of Slashdot.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
The worst/oddest I've seen went something like this:
/.)"
1. Someone ran rsync with -r at the end, intending to do something recursive. This option was treated as an argument, causing a file called -r to be created. This was done in / on an HP-UX workstation.
2. Two years later, someone wrote a script to be run from cron that would run as root then change to a directory containing data files, erase them, and create new ones. This directory of data files was NFS mounted on the workstation in 1 above. Many, many other filesystems were also mounted on this workstation, all rw, all as root.
3. Some time after that, someone rebooted the workstation. Not All of the NFS mounts came up, so when the script in 2 ran as root and did not check to make sure the destination directory existed, it was not able to cd and ran in /
4. The script executed "rm -f *", intending to delete the data files. Unfortunately, the file called -r was still in / and was included in the argument list. Rm of course interpreted this as an option, so the command became "rm -f -r (everything else in
5. 3 and 4 happened on a saturday night when no one was around, so no one noticed all of the data disappearing until Monday, when it was all gone.
6. Several people had a very, very long day. Actually, several long days. A few weeks, actually.
Can you count the number of gross and avoidable administration mistakes, boys and girls?
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I lost all the data on an old hard drive once... after I beat the shit out of it with a hammer.
It was a dying drive, didn't need it anymore. So we had fun! The platters made a nice spiral in the air after I broke the spindle off...
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I have to agree with first posters... these aren't very good stories. But, thinking maybe it's phishing for better stories, I'll byte:
I once created an extremely complex script, crafted lovingly to do something at the time I'm sure I thought important. As always I incrememtally built and tested, assuring myself of one more self-anointed masterpiece. Finally, finished, as an afterthought...
I inserted a variable to point to a directory node below which I would clean up all of my work (even though I knew I had no need for the variable and would never tweak it). It was such a simple addition. No need to test.
Fired up the script, it ran a couple of seconds, I was prepared to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Hmmmm, I don't remember ANY of the test runs running so long. Why is the hard drive light flickering so much? And why still? And why so long?...
Yeah, the
command worked perfectly. Except I defined the variable initially as: cleanupdir=dirname
So, everything was lost except for the frigging "masterpiece".
Undaunted, (I'm no idiot, golllll!), I calmly inserted the QIC backup tape with my prerun backup.
No, wait!, I'll not be caught with that error again! I quickly edited the only remaining file in my tree of files, the offending script and smugly fixed the rogue spelling. I hadn't been working in this industry this long without knowing how to take safeguards!
Now, twenty minutes later, my script fixed... my files restored... let's try this again. Yeah... something about the chronology of fixing the script, then restoring the broken version over it from the backup tape. At least I proved the error was replicatable. So, I am an idiot afterall!
disclaimer: this happened over ten years ago, so I'm a bit short on exact detail of the snafu, but it really did happen. And, even though I repeated my idiocy, the fact I had the backup tape at all with only the one error to fix in the script saved my butt... so not all was lost in the lunacy.
After he pulled the pipe out of the pump I distinctly remember 'hearing' the sound of water hitting a fan followed by 'seeing' that the pump was pushing water upwards-straight into my graphics card fan which was very effectively 'flicking' water over the rest of the PC.
PCs are hard to break, and after 2 days drying out it worked fine.
NB: this happened three times and after the third time and the purchase of my x800 xt I moved back to fans
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
When I was in university (1985-88) I worked in the computer lab and my buddy and I were asked to take a look at one of the secretary's PC that had a floppy drive that was acting up.
Rather than try to diagnose the problem at her desk we usually just replaced the drive and checked it out back at the lab. We removed the existing drive and plugged in the replacement. Because the floppy mounting was rather tedious we didn't completely mount it until we were sure it worked so my buddy held on to it while I powered up the machine.
Now what I haven't mentioned was that the power plugs in this particular brand of PC did not have a "notch" on them like modern PCs and we weren't paying attention to it so when we plugged in the drive we put the power plug on backwards.
When we powered up the machine smoke began pouring out of the floppy drive as my friend began screaming, "Turn it off, turn it off!".
When we realized our mistake we got a new drive and installed it correctly. When we left, the secretary (already cautious of computers) was now almost terrified by the PC on her desk.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I have a beloved Playstation 2 USB kb, which is nearly impossible to replace now. I got coke ( very acidic ) spilled on it and lost all but a few keys.
How do I fix it? Simple, I bought a conductive pen off amazon.com and retraced all the bad traces. You really need to clean with alcohol a lot to make sure you got all that coke off first. It also helps if you have a multimeter to figure out what needs to be retraced and save time. Everyone should have 3-4 multimeters lying around. =)
You could try pouring distilled water into the keyboard, while it's unplugged naturally, and let it sit for a while then drain it. It should remove the stickiness, and not leave any residue or rust the connections if you're fortunate.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
My personal funniest mishap was the day I learn ice cream and laser writers don't mix. I was about 12 at the time I think and we had just gotten a LaserWriter and Macintosh 512 at home.
...lets just say from that day forth the printer always made a funny gear grinding sound but it still keep printing for several years until it was upgraded... about the time I was allowed to go outside and play again IIRC.
I was working on my science fair project on that system (best darn looking presentation seen at a science fair in those days) while licking away at a vanilla ice cream cone I had (flat bottom cone). I set my cone down on the top of the printer and got distracted (when outside to play some bball I think).
I came back 2 hours later to find the ice cream cone had collapsed and done a noise dive into the paper feed area.
My parents well...
I was doing some maintaining on my Linux computer, logged in as root so that I would have suffice access.
/
/lib dir, and seeing that I didn't have _that_ much of important data, I just did a reinstall.
What I _meant_ to do was to delete everything in the folder I was in. Pretty sure of myself added an -f flag so that i wouldn't have to answer yes to a bunch of questions. So then.. ready to delete I did a quick rm -Rf .
I know I didn't have to have the last slash, but what i tried to write was "./". See what a small space can do? It didn't take too long before i figured out what I had done, seeing that it suddenly took several seconds. I did a quick Ctrl+C, but it was already to late. It had wiped out almost my entire
Long story short: Think twice before you flag f boys and girls!
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
OK this story isn't exactly technical nor was it that costly, but it is true and stupid and kinda funny.
A few years back when I was into doing computer mods, I had recently put together what I though was a pretty great rig, a BP6 with dullie 433mhz overclocked to 500mhz each, with dual golden orbs, 16mb voodoo card, etc... so this was done awhile ago...
Anyway after finishing my master piece, I notice it was housed in a beige box. This simple would not do! So I spend a lot of time designing a custom case design. It involved special glossy paint, three sepreate masking jobs to have overlaying geometric inverse colors (Silver and Black mostly), and fitting my computer handle (that I have used for the last, oh 15 years or so) into the design also inversing the lettering as it crossed geometric boundries (only one). It also took several coats. Anyway very complex and well thought out (or so I thought).
I was all proud of my rig, and when one of buddies came over I made sure to show it off.
His ONLY comment was 'Who is "DartVain"'?
I do not know if this is actually a mishap or not, but it is one of my favorite stories. Sometime about 10 years or so ago, during high school, a friend of mine was building a computer. I do not actually recall if it was for himself or not, but I believe it was a 486 25 or 33 mhz or so.
He just couldn't get it to work at all, and asked if I could stop by and help him out. When I got there, the machine would power up, and the power supply fan was spinning just fine.
I recall I started with easy things like reseating the memory, reseating ISA cards... When none of that worked, I disassembled the whole thing and put it back together. Same symptoms as before. He tried similar things, same problems.
I was sitting staring at the machine... And I saw the problem. I told him I knew exactly what was wrong, but I told him I shouldn't tell him, and I should let him find it himself.
I did end up telling him... The power supply voltage was set to 220 instead of 110...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void
http://savingiceland.org
Working tech support, guy dumps entire glass of Orange juice into his IBM Thinkpad. It won't boot, and he wants me to fix it over the PHONE. He was obviously scared to death to tell his boss he trashed a 2K dollar notebook. When he FINALLY sent it in, it took two people to yank the battery, as it was glued in place with crusty orange juice
Again, tech support. Salesman's laptop comes in won't boot. Reason: buggy porno screen saver. We remind scared, contrite salesman "not to install unapproved software on company machines."
Worked in a power plant for a few years. Tape drive caught on fire from being caked with coal dust. While it was still flaming, I grabbed the drive by the parallel cable and whipped it into the middle of the parking lot where it could burn without catching anything else on fire.
Also in the power plant. Guy calls in to say his monitor is "rainbowy". Turns out the CPU underneath the monitor is filled with coal dust which clogged all the fans. The CPU was burning hot and was cooking the monitor. I literally burned my hand on the CPU case.
We had a support contract with HP, who was charging us upwards of 100 dollars for replacement network cards (this was years ago, but was still excessive.) We were testing some machines with 3Com cards we got at Best Buy, even though if HP found out, they wouldn't support those machines. One day, the ENTIRE network goes down. Nothing will bring it back up, until someone happens to yank the power strip connected to the new machine with a 3Com network card in it. The network IMMEDIATELY comes back up. I don't know why a 3Com network card would bring down an entire network, but it DID.
This isn't a mishap, at least not for me. I was initially hired to be an operator on the company's HP-3000. Within about a week, I had written automated scripts to literally do 90% of my job. The rest of the time I just looked at web pages and slept. I figured out that I could lie down by my desk with a screwdriver and sleep on the floor by my CPU. If anyone came by, I just started removing screws from my CPU case like I was working on it. I was behind two locked doors, so I had plenty of time to react when I heard the door latch. I loved that job. The computer mishap here was that they were paying me.
A few years back we had an intern in named Dave. Not a very bright fellow, I might add. We tasked him with installing Linux, Windows and other software onto various desktops we use around the office. At one point he came across a desktop with a faulty hard drive.
For some reason he thought he could repair it, and so he proceeded to open the hard drive up. None of us were there to witness it directly, but somehow he managed to get the very strong magnets close to his penis. They stuck together, crushing a portion of of the bottom of his manhood.
So he rushed in, blood all over and crying, and we were dumbfounded. We got him to the hospital, and then we couldn't help but have a good laugh over his folly. He returned for about a week or so after he recovered, but left soon after that.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
However, this is a very interesting cockup, and the author wrote the story well:
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Freezing will not help with a head crash or key sectors going bad. But there have been cases where it works. Back in the early 90's there was a problem with many Quantum-brand drives called "stiction", where the platter would not spin up after having been powered down. An internal lubricant (or adhesive, I forget which) basically got slightly runny when the drive got hot and re-solidified a bit out of place when cooled. This provided just enough friction to prevent the low-torque motor from being able to spin the drive up. Sometimes just rotating the drive quickly by snapping your wrist back and forth would do it. Freezing is another technique that worked (sometimes a combination of the two).
bp
I was working tech support and talking someone through formatting a hard drive. My workstation was Windows 95. I typed subconsciously as I talked to the guy: FORMAT C: /s/q/u [enter]
1%...2%...3%...4%...5%... OH MY GOD!!!!!!11!!!!
I slapped the reset button and amazingly, nothing bad came from it. It booted and came up just fine!
Another one, I was a net admin and I had an apartment-size fridge in my office. I got the idea to defrost the fridge using a hair dryer, since a block of ice had formed inside it. A few minutes into this, the hair dryer overloads the circuit and I flip a breaker. The breaker on which the ENTIRE SERVER ROOM was running. I sprinted around looking for it, and I found it... 45 seconds after the UPS'es drained.
I remember this one going around DEC 20 yrs ago in the NOTES files.
This borders on urban legend it's so old / well distributed, but should probably be included. google for it or check out: scratch-mokey.html
I saved a cow-orker's ass by crank-starting his Seagate that had the same problem.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
(Disclaimer: I have built dozens of systems and am normally very competent)
OK, this was very late (2:0am) and I was EXTREMELY tired - DON'T mess inside pcs at 2:00am, especially when tired...
I decided to install my shiny new Zalman Super flower cooler into the kids computer as it was in the living room and quite loud. I had to remove the memory to install the cooler, which I did without a problem. When I was re-installing the memory, I noticed that the cooler fins were fouling one of the memory sticks, in fact I had to kinda bend some of the fins out the way to get the memory in. Somehow, the fact that the memory was touching the cooler fins didn't register as being significant...
I turned on, and BANG!
OMG! I realised what a VERY stupid thing I had just done...
What did I do next?
well, I had to determine what parts had blown...
Memory? CPU? Mobo? so of course, I decided to test the easiest thing first, so....
I took the memory stick out that had been touching the fins..... and installed it into my primary computer!!! (All rational thought had obviosuly looong gone!)
I turned on my main machine - nothing. OK, I thought, that memory is bad. I'll put the original memory back in my primary machine...
Turned on, NOTHING!
At this point, the full horror of what VERY VERY VERY stupid things I had just done hit me. I looked closely at the memory I blew up, and there was an actual hole burned in it and several melted tracks...
I ended up replaced two motherboards, two cpus and 4 memory sticks - I just didn't know what parts were safe and didn't want to risk blowing anything else up. I know that I definetley killed the CPU, memory and mobo on the first computer, as each had melty-burney bits on them - in fact, there was quite an impressive hole in the cpu!
The zalman ended up in the trash too...
Upside was I got two much faster systems. It was a very expensive mistake.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
No kidding on the shock thing...a little while ago I was fixing an old computer. I had the open computer sitting on the floor of my room and I was getting pretty bored trying to fix the thing so I kicked up my feet on top of the case and plugged in my amp to play a little guitar. I kept feeling this weird tingling in my feet, and at first I thought it was just my foot falling asleep, so I got up and shook it around for a bit and went back to playing. Well, the feeling was back again, only stronger. Repeat a few more times and now I'm starting to get a little weirded out - feels like there's electricity coming from the computer. So I get up and fiddle around a bit, but I can't feel anything. Put the feet up, and there it is again. At this point I'm totally confused, so I sit down, pick up the guitar and kick my foot onto the top of the case. Thing zapped my foot so hard that I fell off my chair and cracked my back/head into the desk behind me.
Well, I had the computer and the amp plugged into the same outlet. Turns out there was some type of a short and I was completing the circuit between the guitar and the case, which is why I couldn't feel anything when I wasn't using the guitar. The more I moved around, the more the cable pulled on the outlet and the worse it got until it zapped me.
Lesson learned, I guess...feel the tingle and stay clear.
...no two people are not on fire.
During desert storm one, had an emergency order for a replacement machined part that HAD to get out. I get a call that the PC running the machine tool for part of the process went down. A quick look had it as the CRT was bad. Union shop - had to have a union guy do it or face consequences. Waited 45 minutes for him to show up and then tell me that he was taking the computer. My reply was that it just needed a new display. Argued with the idiot for five minutes even swapping displays so that he could see that the PC was working (over his objections). Still he wanted to take the PC. I left the working display on it, went to the tool crib and checked out a hammer, put the hammer through the old display and told the jerk that the display needed replacing. He took the display without comment. Probably because I had the hammer and a really angry face at that point. (hey - minutes counted here...)
Initial install there was a blast -
installs had to be done from government cut tapes. After four tries with us sitting there with thumbs up our behinds for two weeks we were told that I could use MY personal backup tapes since the government procedures could not provide us with valid source. Loaded them without incident. However, the exause fan on the roof jammed, and the firefighters dousing it with water flooded our computer room. Wait for replacement parts. Kitchen underneath had a grease fire fire - computer room flooded again. Wait for replacement parts. Harrier crashes and parts hit the roof. Computer room flooded again, wait for replacement parts. AC in computer room dies. So old that we have to wait for parts to be fabricated. Finially after two months on sitting on our behinds due to all of these disasters, get everything working, have all of the acceptance folks fly in for testing to show up after the kick off meeting to find out that between out 8AM start and the 9:30 "let's start the testing scripts" the WHOLE BUILDING WAS CONDEMNED and we were not allowed in. My whole team was laughing so hard we were crying.
On one job I was approached by a programmer who calmly said he was having problems with his monitor. As I approached his cube, there was black smoke pouring out of the back of the monitor and the top of the monitor was on fire. After grabbing an extinguisher, unplugging the monitor and putting the fire out, I found out he had put a blanket on top of the monitor to "keep the dust out".
At another job, I had spent a couple of weeks installing fiber optic routers and cabling to all of my servers. Turned it all on, configured the networking, and was congradulated by my boss for a job well done. Less than 24 hours later, I was showing the higher ups the new hardware when we heard a cracking noise and smoke came rolling out of the cabinet with the routers in it. After putting out the fire we found that an old IBM mainframe (Model 3033) we were going to remove soon was to blame. The bottom of the coolant reservoir had rusted out and dumped a few hundred gallons of water under our computer room floor. The water pooled under the router cabinet and shorted out the socket that the cabinet PDU was plugged into. We later found out that the spot that the cabinet was placed over was originally going to have a drain there that was omitted during construction. That was a quick $100,000 down the drain (pardon the pun).
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
My personal best was while I was the chief operator/administrator of a Data General MV/9600.
I loved the hell out of that machine, even wrote some very nice system utilities using the CLI. But over the years the system went from async terminals to everything over TCP/IP using the Pacer terminal emulator on a Mac.
But there still were a few async connections to things like DG printers, etc. Of course over the years nobody bothered to remove out of service cables or wires so the back of the machine was a literal copper rats nest.
One day I decide I'm going to clean the mess up. As I'm pulling old wire out I suddenly hear the console beeping. Beeping on those consoles wasn't generally a good thing. I look around the corner at the screen and see "volume hansel dismounted" followed by every other system volume. Uh oh!
I go around front to the SCSI array and see the power is off. Toggle the switch, nothing. Around to the back and the breaker isn't tripped. Power cord is plugged in, etc.
Now the boss comes flying into the computer room. You can tell he's upset by the giant red knot that appears in his forehead whenever he's stressed or angry.
Turns out the power was connected via a twist-lock Hubbel connector. Somehow I had backed it off a half twist which was enough to break current to the device.
Once I got power back on I just re-mounted all the volumes. Of course the outage had tanked a couple of jobs running so I caught flak for that.
It's the mid-90's, and I'm a developer with one of three vendors collaborating on providing a large US bank with a US-wide demographics database (a precursor to a modern CRM). The system was Unix-based, and pretty distributed for its time (8 front-ends, 8 back-ends, and 3 dedicated routing/replication servers in the middle).
It's the first morning of the pilot-to-production phase, and we're all sitting in the datacentre at our terminals, bringing the whole system online for the first time. I'm personally familiar with PC-based terminal emulators, not the fancy X-Windows stations that the client has on their premises. So, once we get everything finally up and running (and it's taken us about 2 1/2 years to get here from concept stage), I start exploring the settings on my X-Windows station. (Anybody remember CDE, and how... bizzare it is to configure, contrasted with KDE or Gnome?)
I'm fiddling around with settings, trying to create application shortcuts to fire up sessions with servers just the way I like, when at one point I get the message that a reboot is required for changes to take effect.
I issued the standard "sync; sync; shutdown -r now" command -- and just after I hit I realized that I had been typing into an xterm session ON ONE OF THE BACK-END SERVERS -- not the local X-station!
Well. The backend server goes down, and when the event-collector picks up the unavailability, it starts up alarms and red flashing lights (I kid you not), and also starts paging people (including myself, ironically).
I'm stunned, and terrified, for I've just brought down a system that had been operational for only 3 hours after being in development for 2 1/2 years.
We eventually get the server back up and running, and afterwards, the ProjMgr (from the prime vendor) drifts over to me and quietly mentions that I had a strange expression on my face earlier that day. We look at each other, and then he says it "must've been a s/w fault somewhere" before wandering off knowingly. (Whew!....)
Moral of the story #1: NEVER work in root/superuser accounts when you don't absolutely need to.
Moral #2: Use color-coded xterms to indicate which systems & what access-levels you are working with!
Microsoft released an operating system.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Don't know if this in the same league as some of the other stories here, but I welcome the chance to come clean and finally confess..
I had a nice home built computer that I used for gaming and internet access. I was upgrading the network card and was having issues with getting the card identified properly. So after some poking around, I realized that my BIOS was a few revisions out of date. Manufacturers website had a current BIOS rev that purported to fix the problem I was having, so I proceeded to flash my computer with the latest version.
After about halfway through, I saw a message that said something like "Error in checksum, press Y to reboot or N to Exit".
Then I had a neuron misfire or something, because I thought "N" and pressed "Y" instead.
Doh!
So I found out then that a computer with a corrupted BIOS will not boot or even turn on. I searched for someone at work or online that could re-flash my bios, and ended up ordering a new chip from somewhere in Texas. After waiting a few days for the delivery, the lack of internet access at home was driving me nuts so I broke down and bought a new MB/RAM/CPU and got things up and running that day.
Next
First week on the job, a computer in the R&D area was having issues with performance I had fixed the problem and decided to do some cleanup as well. Deleted the temp files, removed some unnecessary programs, had a look in the User Profiles tab and saw there were a whole bunch of user profiles there that said "account unknown". Must be from users who have logged on to the computer in the past and have since left the company. So I started deleting them all (hmm, seem to be a lot of them) and noticed as the list scrolled down that the last profile was "Local Computer\Administrator".
Oops, seems I had unplugged the network cable and was off the domain, so the User Profiles window could not resolve the names. And of course deleting the profiles this way means no recovery from the recycle bin. Had to apologize profusely to the guy for deleting his profile, but it did make me more paranoid about deleting files.
Twenty-or-so years ago, I was a young airman maintaining the Transportable Ground Intercept Facility-II (TGIF-II) at Metro Tango, a site located about 10 klicks north of the former Hahn Air Base (now Frankfurt-Hahn International Airport) in Germany. TGIF-II was used by Air Force and Army intelligence operators to intercept communications from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. The operators sat at "collection positions," computer keyboards used to "gist" (transcribe in shorthand) the transmissions they listened to through their headsets.
One morning, as the operators entered the facility and began their pre-mission checks, an Army E-4 sat down at Position 11, close to our places at the maintenance terminal. He didn't look well, and sure enough, within a few minutes he promptly barfed his breakfast onto the keyboard in front of him.
He apologized and we said hey, no problem, get yourself to sick call dude and we'll clean up the mess. Thanks to mil-spec, the WWW III-grade circuit board under the keypad only required a quick rinse in the sink and a few hours to air-dry before it was reinstalled and the position checked good.
One of our civilian contractors was ex-Army, and when we told him the story, he got pissed and said "That guy did it on purpose - he's trying to get kicked out." We looked at the contractor in disbelief. Why the hell would anyone do something like that? But we were Air Force guys and had no clue to what lengths some people will go to escape the Army.
The next day and another mission, the operators filed into the facility and took their places to begin their pre-mission equipment checks. The same guy sat down at Position 11, looked at the terminal for a minute, and blew chunks into the keyboard. The kicker was the little grin on his face after he deposited his stomach contents into the keyboard.
The guy apologized again (still with the grin on his face) and excused himself from the facility. We disassembled the keyboard, washed, rinsed, dried and re-installed. To his credit, they guy didn't eat much either morning.
We don't see the operator for several days, but within a week he returns, sits down at Position 11, and within three minutes regurgitates on the keyboard. This time, we tell him to get the hell out and then we call his duty section. We explain what's happened and tell them since they keep sending the guy back to work, it's THEIR turn to clean the abused circuit board. They send a warrant officer (I guess he was the only technician-type the Army had) to whom we hand over the circuit board.
The next time I see the E-4, he's on the site's Goon Squad, folks assigned to jobs outside the compound while they await administrative or disciplinary action. He's driving the military-issue Volkswagen 9-passenger van used to shuttle workers between the site and an overflow parking lot a quarter mile down the road. It's winter, there's snow on the roads, and my boss, an Air Force master sergeant, and I are on our way to the main base to run errands on our lunch hour. The E-4 slams the van into gear, hits the gas, and power-slides down the small two-lane road, fishtailing back and forth as my boss yells at him to stop. I'm sitting in the back seat and in the rear view mirror I can see that little grin on the E-4's face.
Looks like our contractor was right after all. . .
What?
My funniest (and unfunniest) moment was when I finally took my Compaq Presario 1275 apart after the battery wouldn't take a charge and the power kept shorting out. The warranty had just expired.
It was clear that there was simply a broken contact that needed resoldering - no problem. I did the job, turned it on (still open) and after a few seconds ozone was detected, followed by what looked exactly like a lighter flame. New Year's Eve, 1999. $3200 down the drain. I almost cried, but it was really funny to everyone else in the room that witnessed it.
Turned out that I used the wrong kind of flux, which specifically stated on the bottle that it wasn't to be used for electronics, because it eats the board.
Back in the day, our high school allowed us to take home a Apple IIe on weekends. My friend took one home and called me a few hours later saying he couldn't get it to work after a while. We were 17 at the time, by the way. I drove over to have a look since I was the whiz kid and he was the wannabe. I couldn't get it to boot either, they booted off the floppy drive. I put in a custom boot disk I built and tried it, it didn't work. I pulled out my 5.25" disk and looked at it. It was coated with something and looked wet. I asked my buddy why this would be, his answer: "Well, I got it home and was playing Castle Wolfenstien, and the drive was squeaking pretty loudly, so I just opened the drive and shot a blast of WD-40 into it to quiet it down. It stopped the noise, but now it won't boot."
Ahh, the memories.
That was the worst, lamest, most pathetic computer list I have ever read. That's something my wife would forward (mechanical engineer).
Here's a much better story: my inlaws called in yet another computer-induced panic. Sis was crying, mom locked herself in the bedroom, and dad was in a frenzy yelling at us about his computer and wanting us to come fix it (a four hour drive). The problem was that the computer would not print and the home phone stopped working. We politely told him that we weren't going to travel 8 hours to fix his printer, and he really needed to call the phone company about his phone line.
2 days later the phone guy showed up and unplugged the printer's USB cable from the phone jack.
I don't know if this qualifies as a hardware mishap, but this story is worth repeating. (Yes, this happened to me personally.)
I had lent out a computer to a girlfriend. (this was back in the days when the cheapest computer was still around $1,500.) Well, the relationship came to a sour end and we exchanged back all of our stuff. I had a rather expensive leather jacket of hers, so I went to her place and we traded back (a rather unpleasant visit).
At this point in my life, I was fairly desparate for cash & had needed to sell this computer. I plugged the machine back in only to find... tada... she and one of her girlfriends (who was an admin or something) had decided it would be great revenge to set the BIOS password so that it was required to boot the PC! Wow... wasn't expecting that!
This chick is no match for my superior computing skills, I decide! I will not give her the satisfaction of asking for the password. Some research tells me that I can remove the motherboard battery and reset the BIOS to its default. This I do, but no luck. I leave that frickin' battery out for an entire week! I hear tell of reset jumper switches. No joy. I even called the motherboard manufacturer. No help. In desparation, I began trying every possible BIOS password combination of "dickhead" and "jackass" I could imagine (because you know that is what it will be).
Finally, after about 3 weeks, I was getting desperate. I really needed the money & had to sell the PC. It was looking grim. So, with great reluctance and my tail between my legs, I called the old girlfriend. Luckily, she gave me the password without much fuss. She spelled it out for me: A S s h o l e 5 7 9.
I can only laugh about it now, after many years.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
Is it just me who doesn't find them remotely amusing in any way possible? I mean, it's not like their baby accidentally ate the computer, or a flock of flying monkeys swept in and deleted everything. They reinstalled. Oh, the hilarity!
And wait... someone reversed over a computer. Hilarious! Must go and find duct tape; sides in need of repair...
I originally heard this story from Art during a lull in a seminar on programming implementation when he was a visiting professor at the UofU. It is the best story I ever heard for proving than no good deed goes unpunished. It is also, the funniest computer story I have ever heard.
Stonewolf
Read on....
Subject: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Date: Wednesday, 3 September 1986 16:46-EDT
From: "Art Evans"
To: Risks@CSL.SRI.COM
In another forum that I follow, one corespondent always adds the comment
Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
after his signature. In response to a request for explanation, he replied somewhat as follows. Since I'm reproducing without permission,
I have disguised a few things.
My friend Bud used to be the intercept man at a computer vendor for calls when an irate customer called. Seems one day Bud was sitting at his desk when the phone rang.
Bud: Hello. Voice: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
B: Excuse me? V: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, so he decided to alter his approach to the customer.
B: HOW DID I KILL MABEL? V: YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!!
Well to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate what had happened. The customer was a Biologist at the University of Blah-de-blah, and he had one of our computers that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel (the monkey) breathed. Now Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. The University had spent years teaching Mabel to swim, and they were studying the effects that different gas mixtures had on her physiology. It turns out that the repair folks had just gotten a new Calibrated Power Supply (used to calibrate analog equipment), and at their first opportunity decided to calibrate the D/A converters in that computer. This changed some of the gas mixtures and poor Mabel was asphyxiated. Well Bud then called the branch manager for the repair folks:
Manager: Hello
B: This is Bud, I heard you did a PM at the University of
Blah-de-blah.
M: Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I do
for You?
B: Can You Swim?
The moral is, of course, that you should always mount a scratch monkey.
There are several morals here related to risks in use of computers. Examples include, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." However, the cautious philosophical approach implied by "always mount a scratch monkey" says a lot that we should keep in mind.
Art Evans
Tartan Labs
Back in the early 1990s I worked for a company that sold computer systems, peripherals and printers.
I was working technical support at the time and received a call from someone up near the arctic
circle and they were a print shop or some-such and had a critical job they needed to print but had
ran out of toner.
They had no spare toner.
The closest spare toner they could get was several hundred miles away and accessible only by helicopter.
We set-up an arrangement so that they would get several toner cartridges though they would miss
the deadline.
A little while later, the woman I spoke to called me back and indicated there was giant black streaks on anything they wanted to print.
Apparently, in utter desperation to print they
took an electric drill, took a toner cartridge
for their copy machine and used a drinking straw
to place the liquid toner for the copier into
the empty container for the printer which used a
dry toner system.
What resulted is what our production people
called "toner bombing" a printer.
You can sandblast it all you like but it's not
going to ever print like it did before and it's
all but destined for the landfill at that point.
They RUINED a high-end, $10,000+ printer for
volume production.
Thus endeth the lesson.
I use isopropyl a lot myself as well. I usually buy the 99% stuff so then I can make my own mixtures easier (just add water!) but the CD skipping is one I use it for a lot as well. However, for deep scratches, nothing works better then some metal polish. The worst is scratches from the label side, since it's not as thick as the bottom and typically means you're screwed.
I had a cellphone go through the washing machine before. And it worked OK afterwards (though there was some blotches on the screen) I wouldn't try that again...
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
In our computer lab we had a very un-friendly admin. We used to hate him like anything. Our revenge was to screw up the Win 95 boxes assigned to us. They were the so called protected ones - hooked on to the Novell netware server, had no floppy / cd drives and no internet access. But being running Win95 we were easily able to achieve our goal of hosing the OS. We had to put in efforts only until we figured out the following, after which OS destruction was automagic! -
As I said the boxes didn't use to have floppy/cd drives and so re-installation of OS was very problematic. The net admin figured out a 'slick' way to deal with the situation -
a. Boot 95 to command prompt
b. Enable network and CD to the novell netware share which hosted the Win 95 CDROM
c. His theory being that reformatting destroys the hard drive - fdisk it. (Actual reason being that he won't be able to access the 95 CDROM share after the format) Remove all partitions and recreate them as-is.
d. Run win95 setup from the netware share.
e. Profit!
The machines generally remained on unless a software install required a reboot, in which case the partition table was re-read on boot and things were screwed up, once again.
The admin used to feel better by cursing at the software installation program which hosed the OS!!
He never found out why this was happening and we never bothered to tell him!!
My story:
... takes half a day.
So this one time I was looking at porn, then next thing I know there are pop-ups everywhere. I spend all day trying to eradicate the spyware, finally give up and re-install the system which takes another half a day.
So, a couple months later...
I'm looking at porn, the next thing I know there are pop-ups everywhere. It only takes a couple hours to determine the spyware can't be removed, so I re-install the system, which takes half a day.
So, a couple months later...
I'm looking at porn
So, a couple months later...
Finally, I try FireFox. Ahh, I love FireFox.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Everyone knows backups are important, right? Well, pretend you do if you don't....
So, my first full-time job, I wound up being de facto system operator of the department's AIX machines, since I'd learned the Magic Incantations necessary to upgrade AIX 3.2.3 to 3.2.4 or 3.2.5... or even, this was really great, install AIX on a new computer!
After my first 6 months in that group, the guy who had been doing the backups left for hopefully-greener pastures. No big deal, you just had to run this program which told you which tape numbers to load in to which drives, and printed out the label sheet for the previous night's backups. Everything was done with the standard dump command, which is a nice and robust way to back up.
Everything seemed good; every now and then, a few nodes would fail to back up, but no big deal, they were done on an earlier night, and the tape selection program made sure that a "recent" backup was available for each node before it allowed a tape to be re-used.
If only I had noticed that it was always 3 machines in a row that had backup failures....
So, the inevitable happens... we need to restore an important filesystem. (Anyone who worked with IBM 857mb SCSI drives knows that the inevitable happened about once every 6 months. Per drive.)
Pulled the latest tape, seeked to the right record... funny, this looks like a different filesystem, but that should be a much later record on the tape.
Try the next-earlier one, same thing.
One before that... found the right filesystem. Restore went good, fortunately it was a read-mostly system, and we didn't lose any important changes since that dump.
But having filesystems in the wrong place... I couldn't figure that one out. I went through the backup script (which had been adapted from a magazine article...). Added a whole pile of logging and tracing, especially putting stderr somewhere where it could be read back (it had been sent to /dev/null... of course.)
So those three failures in a row? The went something like this:
What the error messages didn't explain, but some experimenting found, the operation that hit end-of-tape returned end-of-tape, as expected. The next operation got an I/O error, because the last operation resulted in an I/O error, and the tape had not been rewound or ejected.
The thing is, these tape drives would automatically re-wind when you read back an I/O error from them...
So device not ready was obtained while the drive was rewinding. (Normally, it should just block until the rewind is complete. In this case, the NEXT command after it started rewinding would block.)
Then the remaining backups would go fine... overstriking the eariler ones on the same tape.
I've had a fetish for proper error-checking in scripts ever since... and I don't accept scripts written by others unless they will run with #!/bin/sh -e or equivelent.
Back when I was working at Compaq, pre-merger, my most memorable call was from a lawyer. Seems he had gotten so totally frustrated with the quality of support at HP that he'd thrown his computer through his 6th floor window and into the street below.
:), and didn't mind paying the $40 fee for help with unsupported software, as long as I was able to get the thing working.)
:)
:)
Not out the window, mind you... through the window. Shattering the glass on the way by. That afternoon, he was on the phone with me, at Compaq, for help installing his software and restoring backups. (amazingly enough, he'd been smart enough to make backups just before throwing the damned thing out the window
The story does not end there. He was so happy with the support that he asked to talk to my supervisor.... A half hour later, the supervisor comes by and asks if I'm busy. He's just finished talking to the lawyer, and found out that the cause of his problem was his HP laser printer that didn't have driver support for his new Windows XP-based computer, and he didn't like being told by HP that they didn't support that printer with XP yet.... So my boss asks if I'm busy, and I say no, so he hands the guy off to me again to fix his printer, on the house.
How did I fix it? I sent him to HP's website to download the Windows 2000 drivers for the printer. I explain to him that yes, I'm aware that he's running Windows XP, but that Windows XP shares a kernel with Windows 2000, and that because of it, XP Home will not install as an upgrade over 2k Pro. Basically, they're the same OS, except that XP has flashy graphical enhancements. (at the time, that was true). So we download the 2k driver for the printer, and 5 minutes later, he's printing again, and asks to talk to the supervisor again.
Long story short... $100 gift certificate for a local steakhouse, and a plaque that reads "top letter generator" is all I have to show for it. Oh, and the satisfaction of knowing that 4 months later, HP announced the Compaq acquisition.... I bet he was peeved at that.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I don't know if that would be a good school or a bad one to go to.
:)
:)
Pro:
Lunch lasts a few hours!
Con:
You get zapped with electricity from bizarre electrified asphalt (or was it just a ground and your mike was electrified
I once was in a house where neutral and hot were reversed to a light fixture. Worked fine until we decided to upgrade it to something better and the electrician got zapped.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
While at one of the large multi building companies I worked for just after graduating college, one of the senior techs was proudly showing off just how much more he knew then the new college graduates while walking around on the "introduction tour" of his building. When we got to the computer center, I asked him what utilities he used for administration of Novell server. He was happy to provide me with a live demonstration right there on one of the administrative workstations using Norton Commander, whereupon he finishs his explaination with a "And you can delete multiple files in the directory just by selecting them", He hits the keypad plus key (select all),"And typing the correct function key." He then hits F8 (Delete) to demonstrate NC deleting the files.
Then he went on to explain how the new Halo gas system would suppress fires in the computer lab, when the lead network administrator suddenly bolts into the room moving quickly towards the administrative workstation exclaiming, "The fileserver just blew up bigtime!"
Whereupon our guide quickly glances back at the workstation where he has just finished his little file deletion demonstration and pales quickly as he realises why, "Aw sh*t - We'll need to restore from last nights back up. I think I just deleted the entire System directory."
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Actually, though I'm sure you're correct in some cases about the cold helping with a malfunctioning temp. sensor in the drive - I think the freezer trick also sometimes just works because of defective IC chips on the controller board portion of the drive.
(Every IDE hard drive actually has the drive controller electronics bolted to a circuit board on the bottom of it. That's why the "IDE interface" is such a basic thing on your PC, whether it's integrated onto the motherboard or is a seperate PCI card. Most of the real work is done on the drive's electronics.)
With some malfunctioning electronics, you can manage to keep them working properly as long as you keep them cold enough. (One of the old tricks for troubleshooting bad parts in TV sets and the like was to selectively spray them with a can of compressed air, chilling them temporarily.)
A college roommate was impressed by how easily I built my own computers and got too anxious to install his DDR memory in his new PC when he got home that he didn't wait for an expert to arrive. He managed to jam the memory in backwards against the key as hard as he could until he heard a snap. Both the motherboard and memory started on fire.
This is a great site to get other people's stories from: http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
-Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither. -Ben Franklin
Yeh, I once had two $1000+ specialized video cards explode on me due to that.
The GPU blew right off the board.
Twice.
(These cards were "multiconsole cards", essentialy 4 video cards crammed onto one board, plus a usb-like serial bus. the card had 4 rj45 connectors, and you used cat-5 to connect 4 port expander boxes w/ standard svga, mouse, and keyboard connecters on 'em. It allowed you to put 4 extra monitor+keyboard+mouse comboes on a single computer. Usefull for POS stuff. ) The first time it happened, we didn't know what was going on. We thought it was a short or something in the board. The second time, tho, I got a nasty shock as I was plugging the cable in, and the chip exploded inches from my nose (the case was open). I recognized the feel of 120vac, and checked the outlets. Turns out that someone took a shortcut wiring the building. They only used 2 wire cable in the walls, so they wired the ground prong of the outlets to the neutral. That would have been fine, except for the fact that the cable for the outlet the computer was plugged into had it's hot & neutral flipped at the fuse box. Thus the ground of the computer was 120vac off from the ground on the monitor I was plugging in. Yikes.
Oddly enough, the computer survived both incidents just fine.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
I used to habitually keep my machine's case open to allow for easy access. Aside from having to blow the thing out a bit more frequently this never really posed a problem, until I came home one night, drunk. As I lurched into bed, I noticed a very loud, irregular buzzing sound. My CPU fan had started to flake out over the past week and I hadn't yet found time to replace it, but again, no problem-- all I had to do was lightly thwock the side of the heat sink to get it to shut up, at least for long enough to allow me to pass out in peace. I staggered up, weaved my way over to my desk, then jabbed my finger in the general direction of the heat sink.
Here's what happened:
1. My finger went directly into the spinning CPU fan, causing one of the blades to break off and fly directly into...
2. My forehead, causing me to windmill my way backwards onto...
3. My ass, where I noticed with relief that the annoying buzzing sound had stopped, because...
4. The fan was no longer spinning. Of course, it took me a couple of seconds to realize that...
5. Oh shit! I have to turn everything off before...
6. My monitor goes bright blue as my motherboard decides to shut itself down rather than allow the CPU to melt itself into a small pool on the bottom of my case.
Thank you, ASUS, for protecting me from myself.
Posterity, my posterior.
"Hey, did you know RPM will let you remove every package from the system?"
I once had cause to utter the above sentence. I was working on a customer's web server remotely. I was performing some maintenance, upgrading this, migrating that. At one point, I had a list of installed packages I wanted to remove from the system. Well, I screwed up something and somehow managed to run "rpm --erase" with a list of every package currently installed on the system. I was multi-tasking and had switched to other things, so I didn't really clue in to the fact that my RPM transaction was taking way too long to run until some of the scripts tied to the uninstall action started complaining because things like "perl" were missing. I started pounding on [CTRL]+[C] but it was already too late. Almost everything was gone. I couldn't even scp files in.
That was a fun drive to the client site. At least the data was all still there, since only the software was removed.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
i appreciate that this topic has gotten a lot of works to relay their interesting and sometimes funny computer tragedies, but does any else think this post is not a lot more than an attempt to get folks to look at the banner ads on the initial "top 10" link? really, a guy got mad at his laptop and put it in the toilet and flushed? is that funny? more like the guy making up the list was running out of ideas towards the end of the list.