The Power of Deduction

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

When one gets two e-mails saying there will be an overnight power outage, and that the building that one's computer is in is said to be "affected", how does one deduce that the outage does not pertain to him/her?

At least some of the people here said they didn't bother reading the message, thus making them merely ignorant.

Aside for added lulz: During the outage, the contractors failed at correctly wiring the phases of the 3-phase power to one of the buildings.  Some of the tenants were amused (term used wrongly) by the HVAC blowing the wrong way and the elevators going the opposite direction.

Comments

[berkeleyfarm.livejournal.com]

Whoa. That's an example of not being able to reason from A to B.

Although I can see your added lulz and say that I used to get that kind of question from my Help Desk. "Would the power outage affect that?" Duh.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Same people as seen in mock_the_stupid earlier who think that a piece of yellow tape that says FIRE DEPARTMENT DO NOT CROSS doesn't pertain to them and can they please come inside and shop because it's the day after Thanksgiving don't y'know.

[historychick49.livejournal.com]

During the outage, the contractors failed at correctly wiring the phases of the 3-phase power to one of the buildings. Some of the tenants were amused (term used wrongly) by the HVAC blowing the wrong way and the elevators going the opposite direction.

Okay, I totally LOLed on this one. Mostly because I can REALLY see this happening at the inn where I used to work.

[jecook]

I used to work at a place that did small business on-site support.

One of our contract customers called up one morning after some electricians did some re-wiring at their place of business with two blown computers and a sulking UPS.

Turns out that the electricians accidentally wired two phase to a couple 110 circuits, literally exploding the power bricks of two brand new computers, and causing the UPS to flip to battery and sulk.

The techs were amused. I gather the electrical contractor was not when he got the repair bill.

[merlin-t-wizard.livejournal.com]

During the outage, the contractors failed at correctly wiring the phases of the 3-phase power to one of the buildings. Some of the tenants were amused (term used wrongly) by the HVAC blowing the wrong way and the elevators going the opposite direction.
That would REALLY confuse the elevator controller.
Also, be glad you didn't have a 3-phase in-phase-transfer UPS: that gets REALLY messy (think blown SCRs, burned patterns, and traces of magic smoke).

[merlin-t-wizard.livejournal.com]

Yep. Had an electrician wire an outlet to a nearby fluorescent light. Plugged a UPS into that outlet. When we turned the UPS on, *BANG* and some magic smoke. Turned out the light was fed by 277 volts. Oops.

[synesthesiatic.livejournal.com]

We have a lot of different equipment associated with our service. My favorites are the names customers come up with for those types of equipment:

Modem: "Black blinky box", "Internet" [as in, THE INTERNET KEEPS SCROLLING], "Tower", "*company name*" [Ma'am, my entire company keeps searching for signal?]. Interweb box, interwebs, netbox, cable modem, "signal" "signal box", "radio box" "radio"...

Analogue Telephone Adapter: "Silver box" "phone box" "phone tower" "router" "silver brick thing"... "flashy light box" [same call as black blinky box].

Monitor: "TV / TV screen" "flashy pictures" [I wish I was kidding...], flat-top.

Ethernet cable: Phone cord, power cord, internet cable, kitten cable, [cat5, maybe?], thick black cord. [I adore people who ask me if it matters what colour the ethernet cable is.]

Start button [in windows, duh]: Go button, window button, window [as in, I press on the window].

There are more, but I'm at work.

[synesthesiatic.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wrong thread. WTF LJ.