Idle thoughts in the life of an IT Professional that's married with children.

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My favorite saying:

Shared pain is lessened Shared joy is multiplied

 
HumpDay!

Well, yesterday was an exciting one.
Went to a brand new facility we're opening up (Center for Advanced Reproductive Studies, or CARS for short), and the place is GORGEOUS!!! It's in a beautiful office building that can't be more than a few years old.
Brought with me 3 PC's and a notebook to set up, but when trying to set up the PC's at the front desk, there was no power so we called the maintenance guy. He flips on and off all the breakers 3 or 4 times and finally I get a light on a power strip. Then I plug in a second power strip to another plug and the whole thing goes dead again. Hmmmm
He checks the plug out with some 50 cent toy he has and it says the power jack is "reverse polarity".
After fiddling with it for a while (I was in another room), he announces it's working, and that one of my power strips was bad. I toss that one, he leaves and I fire up 2 PC's and a laser printer. As I'm configuring the laser printer on the network, I look down at my feet, and see smoke POURING out so thick and fast that in less than a second I can't see my shoes!
I quickly yank the plug from the wall and the other people in the office go "HOLY SHIT, what happened??".
When my heart got back into my chest, I said "I just turned on the equipment!"

Pulling the equipment out from under the desk, the PC was stills moking. See, if you get two plugs like these (reverse polarity) in a row, you multiply 110 volts X 2, and get 220 volts. Seems like "Bucky Kilowatt" never checked that. So... the scare probably took 10 years off my life, and we only lost one PC, no fire, no cardiac arrest (but almost).

While I was there, I get a call from some guys that are going to do take down a huge oak tree in my backyard saying "We're going to cut it down today". Now, I asked for 24 hours notice so I could take the day off and watch these guys. They don't use one of those huge bucket machines, but this skinny, 75 year old guy CLIMBS the tree and they cut it down from the top. The best I can do is get home around 2:30 and watch them chop up the trunk. Now, this tree is about 75+ feet tall, but about 20 feet up had a hole in one side that at one time, a raccoon lived in! Also, lightning hit the base of this tree about 2 months ago, and it was splitting so it had to come down.
Check out a picture of one part of this hole.
Here's the opposite side of it, and you can see on top the hole the raccoon used to go in.

Well, that was my day... what about yours? *chuckle*

And now, the news not fit to print:

Did you hear about the flight where they had reverse air rage?

This one I can't believe. Mother drops 11 year old UNSUPERVISED son off at an amusement park! Son doesn't show, mom calls police. Can you say busted?

The Government at work. 68-year-old called up for duty in Iraq. Anti-insurgent activities to include keeping whippersnappers off the lawn

Ok, what's wrong with this picture? U.S. Department of Labor sets up website for homeless to help them find jobs. In related news, homeless apparently a major Internet demographic

Want to see your name in hieroglyphics!

Have a great Wednesday all..

posted by Dave at Wednesday, July 21, 2004