Stupid Guest Tricks

Ms. Matterhorn wrote:The guy finally said he couldn't see if it was plugged in, it was too dark in the room, because there was a power outage.

Not a power outage story but in the same vein. I worked in third level tech support at Northern Telecom supporting telephone switching systems. I got a call mid afternoon from a telephone company tech. He said they had just swapped out an old electromechanical switch for one of our solid state systems. It worked for the first day and then died. He had been working on it for a couple of hours and it was dead.

I had him strip it down to the basic cards to run a logic test. It failed. We started doing additional tests when he asked if he could take a break because the room was hot. "How hot?" I asked.

"About 110 degrees." he replied.

"Dude, the system will not work in temps above eighty. You gotta get the room cooled down."

It turned out the old system had been in a equipment room on the roof of a warehouse and the new one went into the same space.

The tech said he'd get the warehouse manager. The manager got on the phone and I told him what the problem was. He said he'd get it fixed fast and gave the phone back to the tech. In the background I heard a huge crash of breaking glass. I asked the tech what happened. The tech replied, "The manager picked up a chair and threw it through the window!"

The room cooled down and the system came back on line. The manager said he'd have an air conditioner installed the next day.

I like guys who take action instead of doing studies.

hobie16 wrote:Not a power outage story but in the same vein. I worked in third level tech support at Northern Telecom supporting telephone switching systems. I got a call mid afternoon from a telephone company tech. He said they had just swapped out an old electromechanical switch for one of our solid state systems. It worked for the first day and then died. He had been working on it for a couple of hours and it was dead.

I had him strip it down to the basic cards to run a logic test. It failed. We started doing additional tests when he asked if he could take a break because the room was hot. "How hot?" I asked.

"About 110 degrees." he replied.

"Dude, the system will not work in temps above eighty. You gotta get the room cooled down."

It turned out the old system had been in a equipment room on the roof of a warehouse and the new one went into the same space.

The tech said he'd get the warehouse manager. The manager got on the phone and I told him what the problem was. He said he'd get it fixed fast and gave the phone back to the tech. In the background I heard a huge crash of breaking glass. I asked the tech what happened. The tech replied, "The manager picked up a chair and threw it through the window!"

The room cooled down and the system came back on line. The manager said he'd have an air conditioner installed the next day.

I like guys who take action instead of doing studies.

My kind of manager!!!

hobie16 wrote:Steam indicates there's a boiler somewhere close by to generate steam. If the boiler is not hot enough to generate steam to spin up the generator then it'll be a long time before the generator can come on line.

Backup generators have to be powered by something that can spin up fast to get the generator on line. That'll be either an internal combustion engine (gas or diesel) or gas turbine.

The steam could come from a central steam plant that would probably have enough to juice up a big generator. But in this situation, an engine of some sort (and it could even be a natural gas one) would probably be best.

hobie16 wrote:Not a power outage story but in the same vein. I worked in third level tech support at Northern Telecom supporting telephone switching systems. I got a call mid afternoon from a telephone company tech. He said they had just swapped out an old electromechanical switch for one of our solid state systems. It worked for the first day and then died. He had been working on it for a couple of hours and it was dead.

I had him strip it down to the basic cards to run a logic test. It failed. We started doing additional tests when he asked if he could take a break because the room was hot. "How hot?" I asked.

"About 110 degrees." he replied.

"Dude, the system will not work in temps above eighty. You gotta get the room cooled down."

It turned out the old system had been in a equipment room on the roof of a warehouse and the new one went into the same space.

The tech said he'd get the warehouse manager. The manager got on the phone and I told him what the problem was. He said he'd get it fixed fast and gave the phone back to the tech. In the background I heard a huge crash of breaking glass. I asked the tech what happened. The tech replied, "The manager picked up a chair and threw it through the window!"

The room cooled down and the system came back on line. The manager said he'd have an air conditioner installed the next day.

I like guys who take action instead of doing studies.

Awesome!!! Although I kind of suspect the manager had just been looking for an excuse to throw a chair through a window. I know I've had days like that!

BRWombat wrote:Awesome!!! Although I kind of suspect the manager had just been looking for an excuse to throw a chair through a window. I know I've had days like that!

LOL, I've had several days where I've wanted to throw a chair (or a guest) out a window.
Though some managers (especially the newer ones) do a great job taking charge. Once we were really short staffed and a manager came down and helped us move wheelchairs, load/unload boats, and merge the line. It was great.

BRWombat wrote:Awesome!!! Although I kind of suspect the manager had just been looking for an excuse to throw a chair through a window. I know I've had days like that!

If I'd known what he was going to do I would have driven over and helped.

I got to break all the windows out of a house that was going to be D-8ed. Man that felt good!

hobie16 wrote:If I'd known what he was going to do I would have driven over and helped.

I got to break all the windows out of a house that was going to be D-8ed. Man that felt good!

Did you get pictures of the Cat doing the deed? Or at least got to watch?

GRUMPY PIRATE wrote:Did you get pictures of the Cat doing the deed? Or at least got to watch?

Got to watch. It was just like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

hobie16 wrote:Got to watch. It was just like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Too cool!! I have gotten to see a few things blown up but never run through!!

GaTechGal wrote:The steam could come from a central steam plant that would probably have enough to juice up a big generator. But in this situation, an engine of some sort (and it could even be a natural gas one) would probably be best.

The main thing the plant behind the MK does to my understanding is heat and chill water for heating and cooling the MK buildings. I bet it could easily generate the steam needed for a big generator.

Steam-powered generators are excellent for generating large amounts of power efficiently but the nature of them make them very unideal for backup power systems. The large generator behind Main Street looks to be a diesel one. Easy to fire up if needed.