telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/17/90)
A hot Sunday afternoon in August, 1959. Resentful, I go to work that day from 3:30 <==> 11:30 PM in the UC phone room. Brash sixteen year old that I was, I came traipzing in to work and bid adieu to the two ladies who were grateful to see me five minutes early so they could leave. I worked alone Sunday evenings during the summer, when school was out and phone traffic was minimal. I brought a large paper cup of Pepsi-Cola with me, and had it sitting right next to me -- I knew better -- but was just careless. I'd been there all of five minutes, I guess, when the board got real busy for a couple minutes, and sure enough, my arm accidently knocked over that Pepsi and sent it dribbling down inside the ringing keys on the front panel. The board started buzzing, and lit up like a Christmas tree, various lights blinking off and on, etc. After overcoming the initial shock of what I had done, I moved to a different position to set up shop and immediatly called 611. I talked to a guy who said he would be over in about ten minutes, but in the meantime, 'take that electric heater they keep in the closet and set it up to blow hot air on the underside of the front cabinet on the board, so it will start to dry out ... ' Well, he got there ten or fifteen minutes later, and of course I had gotten rid of all the evidence at that point. This fellow sat there for over two hours -- until sometime around 6 PM that Sunday night as I recall. He never said a word to me; just sat there and picking around at the wires and the contacts. Brash and snotty as I could be, I knew well when it was time to shut up and keep my distance, so I sat on the other side of the room and kept taking calls and running the board, looking over my shoulder every minute or two to see what he was doing. This fellow was about sixty years old at the time; he just sat there silently, stripping wires and occasionally muttering to himself. Finally he packs up all his stuff and said to me, 'You know, if I were to tell Mrs. Henderson about this tomorrow, you'd be in deep trouble.' Mrs. Henderson was the phone room supervisor, and a battle-axe in her spare time. But he never said a word. About six months later I saw him working on the switchboard at the Windermere Hotel (around midnight as I recall; this guy worked strictly what was called 'night plant', taking care of the UC switchboards and the other boards in the area on an emergency basis), and I thanked him for not snitching on me. He said he had done the same thing (spilled a beverage) 'when I worked the switchboard at the Century of Progress Fair back in 1933 ... I was the only one in our family to have a full time regular job during the depression, and if I had lost that job, my family would have gone on welfare ... the guy who came out to fix the board at the fair gave me a pass and didn't say anything about it, so I figured I owed someone else the same favor.' I have never kept anything liquid near phone equipment since. Monday at our office, the kid who functions as file clerk and Fax machine operator spilled his coffee all over the Fax keypad. The serviceman charged a couple hundred dollars to fix it. Junior was appropriatly mortified and spent most of the afternoon hiding in the closed files stacks downstairs. The Chairman walked past while the serviceman was doing his thing: 'what happened?' ... 'I dunno ... I guess these things wear out sometimes' I told him. Everyone has to learn this lesson the hard way it seems: *No beverages around telecom and computer equipment*. Ever. Patrick Townson
wht@n4hgf.n4hgf.mt-park.ga.us (Warren Tucker) (07/19/90)
In article <9826@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Everyone has to learn this lesson the hard way it seems: *No beverages >around telecom and computer equipment*. Ever. Or (re: _Fat Mand and Little Boy_) around two hemispheres of exposed plutonium :-). Great posting: passing the tradition of letting some receive the `benefit' of a hard lesson without losing the right to put it into practice.
ckp@cup.portal.com (07/19/90)
I very much enjoyed your story. Thanks for sharing it! % Christine K. Paustian % ckp@cup.portal.com % % Los Numeros On-Line %%% sun!portal!cup.portal.com!ckp % % PO Box 149 %%% 1:272/39 FidoNet % % Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510 % Where Radio Is Fun Again %
hkhenson@cup.portal.com (07/19/90)
Re the stories of beverages in the switchboard, I am reminded of a time '79-'84 when I tried to run a walkin, rent 'em by the hour microcomputer storefront. Since most of the use was recreational, it was hard to ban beverages -- not to mention the money we took in from the coke machine! Our response was to keep a gallon of distilled water on hand, and on the infrequent times someone spilled a drink into a keyboard, we rinsed them off. Never lost a keyboard, those old Apple IIs were tough! Keith Henson
harrism@omhftre (Mark Harris) (07/21/90)
telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Everyone has to learn this lesson the hard way it seems: *No beverages > around telecom and computer equipment*. Ever. So, how many people out there in telecom land were sucking on a drink as they read Patrick's article? Guilty as charged, but then it's only a PC/XT. :-) Mark Harris UUCP: ...!uunet!mjbtn!raider!omhftre!harrism Domain: omhftre!harrism@raider.MFEE.TN.US
dgriffiths@ebay.sun.com (Darren Griffiths) (07/31/90)
I'm sure that many people are posting similar stories but I can't resist adding my twenty cents worth (inflation due to the S&L screw-up.) Back in my days at UCSB I was responsible for taking care of some VAXen that were shared between researchers and secretaries. One day a particularly crazed secretary called me up with the usual complaint "My computer doesn't work." For some reason these people, supposedly trained extensively in word processing and technical writing, never quite understood that they had a terminal and the computer was a long ways from them and probably working fine. Nevertheless, I went through my standard list of things to try and avoid walking to the secretary's office until I was finally convinced that the terminal was in fact switched on, plugged in, online and the person in question hadn't hit the scroll-lock key. Somewhat dejectedly I went up to the office to find it empty, I sat down at the terminal and spent ten minutes playing with it until I was pretty sure that the keyboard had died. I unplugged it and was carrying it out of the office when in walked the secretary holding a cloth dripping with water. She looked at the keyboard and said "Oh, you're not taking my keyboard are you? I've just spent twenty minutes cleaning it." I suppose some people were just not meant to use computers. darren