I gotta get me some of these

[doolols]

Now, I'm a technical support guy in schools, which is not a bad job, all in all. As long as you have good personnel skills, and can get on with people, you can choose pretty much what you do day to day. One of my problems is convincing suppliers that I'm not some dippy teacher person. Like,
"Hello, Mister projector person, your projector is four months old, and it doesn't work."
"Ah. I see. Have you tried switching it on and off?"
"Yes. Several times."
"Is the power light on?"
"No."
"Do you have power to it?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Have you checked?"
"Yes."
"How did you check?"

It's about this time I explain that I've spent twenty-five years, designing, installing and maintaining computer-controlled machine tools all round the world, and yes, I'm sure it has power.

Now, some enterprising anarchists ... err .. valuable technical support people have developed a range of equipment that I can use to make sure that the equipment is faulty - permanently.

http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

[Ed]

Nutter

[doolols]

In my previous job, I kept a 'black museum' of bits of kit that had come to a rather untimely end. The nice thing about catastrophic electrical failures is the sound they make, and the impressive molten metal pieces you can admire for years to some 

[Ed]

I had a motorbike like that, once.  A friend of my step-father was a lecturer at the local college, teaching automotive engineering, and every time I managed to scrape the money together to change something that'd died on my bike, he'd say, "Oooh!  Oooh!  Can I have that for my chamber of horrors?"  I think most of his chamber of horrors came from me   Sprockets that looked like circular saw blades, chains that'd bend past ninety degreees (sideways), the engine mounting bolt that sheared and fell out while I was overtaking a juggernaut doing seventy miles an hour   Fresh pair of pants needed that day

The thing with electronic failures is they're rarely spectacular - maybe a darkened patch on the PCB, a baked resistor, or something you have to probe for, so it must be quite satisfying to see a melted blob and hear a pop and smell rosin

[doolols]

Hear a pop? Hear a pop? Oh nooo. We went for BANGs. Usually 3 phase power (415 volts a.c.), where some divvy has connected two phases together. Or large electrolytic capacitors we used at one place that someone had connected the wrong way round. That was fun.

Working with machine tools meant you always heard fantastic horror stories. Like the milling machine that someone had left on a slow upward feed while they went to lunch. Damn thing was so powerful that when upward movement met solid 2 foot square cast iron machine column, the column lost out. It split the cast iron. the resultant bang was enough to bring people from the canteen to switch it off.

Or the engine test cell I was working on (testing jet turbines), where the walls had a covering of falf-inch thick steel. "Why so?" the young Gerald asked. I heard the tale of an engineer overriding safety trips to do some testing, and someone had left a nut loose holding two flanges together. The flanges were about four feet in diameter, rotating at something over 20,000 rpm. The nut (about an inch across) whistled past thie guy's ear, straight through the walls of the test cell, across the control room, and embedded itself in the back wall. That's when they started lining the cells with steel.

Or worling in a live electrical cabinet in the USA, and an electrician quietly whispering in my ear "You want to mind your head there, Ger." As I manoevred inside the cabinet to see meter readings, I'd put my head less than an inch in front of live 440 volt busbars. Oh, what fun.

Schools are much safer places to work 

[Ed]

   Yeah - sounds like it

Part of the reason for my troubles this week is a dopey electrician who can't figure out how to wire up a heating system.  He was employed by (against my express wishes), and lives right next door to, the client.  Threw a hissy fit when he was told he'd have to wire it, because he didn't know how to do it.  I begged the householder to let me bring in somebody who knew what they were doing, only to be told, "We already have an electrician - he'll learn."    Well, he didn't, and now the client won't pay because the heating system doesn't work properly   The reason being that the dolt has effectively wired three systems together without using relays, so the whole effing lot is backfeeding all over the place.  Dickhead.  I could happily murder the lot of them especially since they still won't let me bring my own electrician in to sort it out.  I lost any small amount of faith I had in the guy when he reported that the fault lay with a two port motorised valve that was 'defective'.  The reason for the valve not working turned out to be that he hadn't wired-up the neutral   Stupid bastard.

[doolols]

Electrics is one of the things someone always knows someone "who's good with electrics". Our friends over the road employed someone out of the Yellow Pages to put in a new consumer unit. The job grew and grew (a case of "while we're here, do you want us to look at your dodgy sockets / light fittings / heating controls etc etc etc") Ever since, their lights always flicker, and they had assumed it was a problem with the supply to the street. Not so.

[Ed]

This guy is NIC registered, and I'm sorely tempted to put in a complaint about him.  The electrics on heating controls obviously isn't my field of expertise, but I'm now in the awkward position of having to draw out a schematic wiring plan, just to prove to the householders that it's their electricians fault the system doesn't work as intended   I think I've sussed it now, but I could do with knowing a few technical terms to do with the operational state of relays.  'Normally closed' - does that mean the contacts are normally closed and allow the current to pass through, or does it mean the opposite?  It doesn't really matter to me, because I know the state they're meant to be in, but it would be nice to use the proper terms for the sake of brevity

Dear God, I'll be glad when Monday's over - that's when I'm in the lion's den.  Think of me at ten o clock....

[doolols]

Sorry I missed you, Ed. For the record, normally closed (n/c) contacts are closed, and allow current to flow through them, when you get them out of the box. When they're operated (the coil gets some voltage across it), the contacts open, and current does not flow.

[Ed]

Thanks for confirming that, Gerald - I thought that was the case.  As it turns out, all that grief and the bastards made a point of being out when I called, then rang my solicitor at 11AM to say the time wasn't convenient for them   They're just playing silly buggers and trying to drag it on and on and on.  I don't think they want it resolved.

[doolols]

This must be so frustrating for you. Want us to send the boys round? 

[Ed]

According to some of the lads who worked over there, the man of the house is shit scared that I'm going to give him a good pummeling   I don't work like that - I'd far rather have a peaceful life and stay within the law than throw my weight around, or his, for that matter.

It's only four grand at stake now, so it's not exactly high drama, but it is annoying when I went out of my way to help them, all through the project, and I've done them so many favours.  Some people just mystify me with their ingratitude.