for a more dramatic display watch the history channel segment on
electricians on modern marvels....
yikes... they feed voltage to a simulated electrician and crisp...
ughghgh scary....
Thanks Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC
Please check our web site at
http://www.smecc.org
to see other engineering fields, communications and computation stuff we
buy, and by all means when in Arizona drop in and see us.
address:
coury house / smecc
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glendale az 85301
----- Original Message -----
From: "der Mouse" <mouse_at_rodents.montreal.qc.ca>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 6:49 PM
Subject: Re: I'm so stupid... Was: Head Cleaners
> > More stories when some others have owned up, I guess :-)
>
> Well, let's see.
>
> ----
>
> There was the time I was working on mains wiring (helping my parents
> with their house) and we had something - an outlet box, I think - to
> work on. We wanted to flip the breaker for that circuit before working
> on it, but for some reason we weren't sure which circuit it was on. I
> said something like "well, let's find out", stuck a screwdriver in the
> corner of the box (metal boxes, properly grounded) and leaned it over
> to touch the hot wire.
>
> It worked, in that it flipped the correct breaker. But I was idiot
> enough to be looking right at it as I did this. When I could see
> again, I found that the screwdriver had a semicircular piece chewed out
> of its shaft, about halfway through, and the room smelled of vapourized
> metal - steel and copper, presumably.
>
> I've never taken that drastic an approach to flipping a breaker since,
> and don't expect to unless something fairly precious is at stake (say,
> someone is being electrocuted, that's about the level of severity that
> could lead me to crowbar a mains circuit).
>
> As far as I know, the screwdriver is still in service. (It was last
> time I had occasion to work around that house, which was years ago.)
>
> ----
>
> Then there was the time I was trying to debug a problem with a
> packet-filtering firewall. The packets just weren't getting through.
> I stared at the rules, my boss (himself a sharp geek) stared at the
> rules, one of the owners stared at the rules (the company is owned by
> two people, the founders - a geek and a businessman), the person who
> did most of the firewall stuff stared at the rules, and then someone
> else, who didn't do diddly with firewalls in general, said something
> like "um, aren't *those* supposed to be over *here*?".
>
> Sure enough, the rules were (liberally paraphrased)
>
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT1
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT2
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT3
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT4
> pass from INTERNAL to EXTERNAL port PORT1
> pass from INTERNAL to EXTERNAL port PORT2
> pass from INTERNAL to EXTERNAL port PORT3
> pass from INTERNAL to EXTERNAL port PORT4
>
> and needed to be
>
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT1
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT2
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT3
> pass from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL port PORT4
> pass from INTERNAL port PORT1 to EXTERNAL
> pass from INTERNAL port PORT2 to EXTERNAL
> pass from INTERNAL port PORT3 to EXTERNAL
> pass from INTERNAL port PORT4 to EXTERNAL
>
> I've rarely had that duh! a moment. (At least I had some company.)
>
> /~\ The ASCII der Mouse
> \ / Ribbon Campaign
> X Against HTML mouse_at_rodents.montreal.qc.ca
> / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
>
>
Received on Thu Jul 01 2004 - 00:36:16 BST