I'm so stupid... Was: Head Cleaners

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Wed Jun 30 20:49:11 2004

> 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
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Received on Wed Jun 30 2004 - 20:49:11 BST

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