My own true version of a Snopes Urban Legend.

[benburch]

This is a note I just sent to the Snopes people;

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/cleaner.htm

I have a true, firsthand account that is just like this story!

EDIT: 1970s, not 1980s! I should proofread.

In the late 1970s I worked for Data Systems Sales, an Elgin, IL company that sold small business microcomputer systems. The system we sold the most of was the Infotecs IMP, a computer that consisted of a large white box with the processor, memory, and two or four 8" floppy disk drives, and a monitor/keyboard unit and a lineprinter.

Inside of the white box was a very large regulated power supply which in addition to running the computer itself supplied regulated power to two outlets on the back of the unit into which you plugged the monitor and the lineprinter.

Now, we had a sub-distributor in a nearby city, Rockford, IL, who had one of these systems for demonstration use, and was also using it to keep their books.

They were really upset with us, though, as the system kept failing them, and they would lose all the data they had entered.

Routinely, they would call us, and we would drive out there only to find that the system seemed to be working fine. We'd replace the unit with a spare and take it back to the shop where we would test the heck out of it and nothing would fail.

Finally, in frustration, one of our technicians, Jim McClouth, decided he would wait there the whole day and SEE it fail.

He showed up at 6 AM, well before they opened, and actually entered the building with the very first employee, got a chair, sat it across from the computer, and waited. By 7:30 AM the office secretary had booted the machine and was entering data.

All went fine until 10 AM, when everybody stopped working.

The secretary got a large coffee urn out of the closet, filled it with water, coffee, and set it on the desk next to the computer.

You see this coming don't you?

She unplugged the lineprinter from the back of the computer box and plugged in the coffee urn. Of course that was far too many amps for the poor power supply, and the computer crashed, destroying her morning's work.

Seems the computer had been plugged into the outlet that they routinely used to make coffee, and they saw the outlets on the back as nothing more than an extension cord!

Feel free to use this story on the page if you like.

-Ben Burch
Elgin, IL

[GrpCaptMandrake]

1. Of course! There's the problem!

Faulty nut behind the keyboard!

:rofl:

Just so long as you've never awakened in a bathtub full of ice in a hotel bathroom missing a kidney . . . that's about the creepiest of the "urban legends."

[TahitiNut]

10. In techie terms, that's "PBKAM"

(Problem Between Keyboard And Monitor) :evilgrin:

[havocmom]

2. Thank you so much. I feel better about myself now.

Even I wouldn't have done something THAT silly.

Oh, and maybe you could help me figure out why my toaster is making all sorts of interesting blue and pink sparks when I try to plug it into the new outlet my husband wired into our kitchen... The coffee maker doesn't seem to mind the outlet. The toaster, which does NOT have a polarized plug hates it. It is one of those new outlets for kitchens and baths, with the shut off safety switch-y thing-y

And, yes, as a matter of fact, I am blond. Why do you asl? ;)

[jmowreader]

15. This is semi-common

Well, the blue and pink sparks not so much...

The outlet your husband installed is called a Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor, or GFCI. Let's say you're using your hairdryer in the bathroom one day, and your husband tells you that he's screwing the neighbor's daughter. Obviously, you're going to throw the hairdryer down, turn around and kick your husband squa in the nuts. Unfortunately, the hairdryer made one bounce off the countertop and landed in the sink full of water. The GFCI will immediately pop to keep the house from burning down.

That's what it's for and that's what it does.

Start by turning the breaker off. Go to the kitchen with a flattip screwdriver and a roll of electrical tape and take the GFCI out of the wall. You're looking for two things. First, you'll notice there are three color of screws on the GFCI--brass, silver and green. The green wire is always ground--G for Ground. There's also a white wire and a black one. Make sure the white wire is hooked to the silver screw and the black wire to the brass screw.

Now for the fun part: there are two black screws and two white ones on a GFCI. If the receptacle is installed so you can read the writing on it, the bottom screws are the "line" screws and the top ones the "load" screws. One GFCI will protect every outlet on the circuit, so long as it's the first outlet in the circuit. Unhook the wires from the load screws, tape 'em up so no copper is showing, wrap more tape around the screws on the GFCI so no one gets fried by this, plug a lamp or something into the GFCI, then go turn the power back on at the breaker box. If the lamp doesn't work, the wires that should be hooked to the load screws are hooked to the line screws. Turn the breaker back off. If the lamp worked, hook the wires back up to the GFCI--always, always make sure that when you hook wires to an outlet you curl the end of the wire and attach it so it's running clockwise; this keeps the wire from being forced out from under the screw when you tighten it. If it didn't work, unhook the wires from the load screws, screw them to the line screws, then hook the other wires to the load screws. Finally, put the GFCI back in the wall and reattach the cover before you turn the power back on.

[havocmom]

17. Thank you for the tips. Will check it out when he is not home

Don't wanna hurt his feelings ;)

The puzzle to me is: The coffee maker works fine, plugged into the same outlet. No flashing lights no sparks. Just does it with the toaster.

Put toaster on a differnt plug, no sparks. :shurg:

And thanks for reminding me what the GFCI was called. Posted before coffee and at my age, sometimes words just hide in my brain. I sat, staring at the computer moniter while typing that, but the damn words would NOT come.

Maybe that blond thing again. We don't necessarily have more fun. Sometime's it's just that our attention span is so short and memory so bad that everything just always seems so new & ectiting! :D

[whatever4]

3. User head space nm

[RoyGBiv]

4. That's hilarious ...

I forgot the name of it -- bookmarked at home -- but there's a website devoted to IT horror stories like this.

[bbernardini]

14. techtales.com

[mrfrapp]

16. Apple Tech Support

Not what you're thinking of but these are a hoot.

http://suso.suso.org/mediafiles/Apple-techsup/

[elehhhhna]

5. Here's atrue one, also:

Hubs worked for a builder in Cook County who bought land dirctly from the county, near the site of an old, long shuttered County Tuberculosis/long-term care for the indigent-hospital.

New homes were built.

Some people moved in.

Before the final grade (finish-up of earthwork, prior to placing sod, etc.) Cook Cty. had a "100 year rainstorm"--you can see where this is going, right? Think "Poltergeist".

Yep. Homeowners awoke to find the newly surfaced remains of the dead--long buried in an unmarked Potters Field on that land.

[MostlyLurks]

6. True One From CompuServe Tech Support

Not nearly as funny, but this one has always made me chuckle:

I was working at CompuServe as an account rep and was thinking about moving to the tech support department, so my department head had me sit with a tech phone rep for a day.

One particular caller reports that CompuServer has "crashed" his computer. The tech goes through some Q&A to define the exact nature of the problem and it comes down to the fact that the CompuServe host program is ALWAYS on the guy's screen.

CompuServer tech does some more verbal probing to find out what, if anything, caller has done to try to rectfy the situation. Caller states he has turned the machine off and on, but CompuServe just pops right back up.

After literally about 30 minutes, the tech decides he wants to reboot the computer to a command prompt. So he tells the guy to shut down the computer and then waits about 15 seconds, then says "Fire it back up". The caller immediately says "It's back up and the damn CompuServe is still there."

At this point, the tech placed caller on hold and began to laugh hysterically. I was completely clueless and finally, once he calmed down asked what was going on.

"He's just shutting the monitor on and off."

Mostly

PS The call lasted an additional 10 minutes as the tech *delicately* explained the the computer had two power switches. Caller ended by saying "Aw hell, I'll just have my kids turn it off for me."

[benburch]

7. I also (same company as above) had somebody try to talk to the compter

We were just installing the thing, and the people there (a fuel oil dealer in Rural Illinois) had never seen a computer except on "Star Trek". They thought all computers could talk.

[MostlyLurks]

12. Oh hell, I talk to my computer all the time.

If it understands, I'm sure it has a massive inferiority complex and serious misgivings about my anger management skills.

Mostly

[SheilaT]

8. Okay, that was long enough

ago that I have no trouble believing they were dumb enough to do that. And even though I realize the rest of the stories just posted are true, I'm completely amazed at them.

[benburch]

9. People are not only stupider than you imagine...

they are stupider than you CAN imagine!

[LondonReign2]

11. Here's mine

This was in the early '90s. We provided benefits administration software to companies at the time, and one user was having difficulties performing a certain function. Well, we had the capability of course to log on remotely to her machine and follow along with what she was entering.

So we say, "Okay, we can see what you are doing, go ahead." Can you see where this is going?

"Can you see this?" she asks. We don't see any activity on her PC.

Turns out she is holding up a piece of papar to the monitor so that we can "see" it.

[Xithras]

13. LOL! I had a similar thing happen back in my tech days.

Except it was a space heater. The company kept their computer in a 55 degree room, and whenever the data entry clerk came in she brought her space heater...and plugged it into the monitor power feed on the power supply (the monitor was plugged into the wall). The heater made the power supply so noisy that it corrupted data like crazy.

My personal favorite "dumb user" story goes all the way back to when I worked as a counter technician in a computer store though. We had this one lady who brought her new PC in EIGHT TIMES because it kept corrupting data. The machine always diagnosed OK, but the data on the hard drive would be completely trashed. We replaced the drive, the memory, and even the motherboard before finally deciding that the computer was a lemon and replacing it.

She was in again three days later complaining of (you guessed it) a corrupt hard drive...this time demanding a refund. The manager was actually going to give it to her when I took him aside and told him that it HAD to be something with her house...she had bad electrical wiring, a short in her phone line (modem), or a big unshielded electrical transformer nearby. We talked her into not only letting us fix it one more time, but promised her that from that point on, we'd fix it in her home free of charge (the reality is that I wanted to see what she had around it).

Four days later she called me up again, screaming in fury because her PC was dead again. I climbed in my car, drove to her house, and becan laughing hysterically when I walked into her cramped little office.

You see, she didn't have room to put the mini-tower under her desk and didn't like staring at the big black case all day long, so she had "decorated" every square inch of the case...with refrigerator magnets :dunce: