I have heard of a satellite gaffe too!. A friend of a friend works in them orbiting thingies and told us how after launching one of them a thankfully minor component that had to deploy didn’t. Apparently the thing was a nuisance that kept popping out as they were working on the satellite, so someone fixed it “temporarily” in place with a bread bag wire that was forgotten and made it to space.
About a month or two ago I replaced my video card and my PSU in order to beef up my system a bit. After reading about the enormous load my 4870x2 would apparently put on the power supply I unplugged all but one hard drive and the video card, and booted in to windows. Everything worked fine and the PSU was more than capable.
I then powered down, reconnected the remaining four drives, the optical drive and all USB and sound cables. Powered up, Windows appeared, and just as I was putting the side of the case back on I noticed one spare male fan connector was unmarried. I figured I’d just tie it up out of the way and so proceeded to do so to the case itself.
Cue immediate and sphincter-loosening test of my new PSU. As it turns out it does indeed cope with live circuits being spontaneously grounded through the case.
I pulled a somewhat similar stunt on a Socket5 system way back by putting a jumper cap on a 2-pin fan header instead of the nearby bus speed selector (60/66MHz, bitches!). Thankfully, the PSU cut off instantly on powerup and everything survived.
Vindication from Engadget in their review of the new iMac!
Speaking of the side, the right side holds the slot-loading 8x DVD burner – no Blu-ray here – and an SDXC card slot. The SD slot is obviously welcome, but putting it directly under the DVD slot of the exact same width is a recipe for disaster – we’ve accidentally stuck an SD card into the DVD drive of our daily driver Core i7 iMac more times than we can count. Apple really needs to move the SD slot farther away from the DVD slot – fishing around in your shiny new iMac’s optical drive for a lost SD card with a butter knife is not a recommended leisure activity.
I feel better.
Similar story, but more details and tragedy:
I’d just accepted a new job halfway across the country, and on a Thursday morning, drove myself and a small U-Haul trailer full of my most basic essentials to my newly-purchased home so that I could report to my first day of work the following Monday. My wife, kids and all belongings were to follow later the next week. Amongst those essentials was my HP PC, which I’d recently (proudly, successfully) updated with a new graphics card, and my recently purchased copy of Civilization 2, which at the time I’d barely begun playing, but was completely addicted to. Since the new house did not yet have cable or furnishings of any kind, my plan was to spend the entire weekend with Civ2, delivered pizza and beer in the vacant house. Oh, the anticipation!
When I arrived, I was too tired from the 18-hour drive to attempt PC-setup, so I crashed on a thin mattress laid on the floor of my soon-to-be-master-bedroom and dreamed of my long-awaited Civ2-marathon. So, on Friday morning, I unloaded the U-Haul as quickly as humanly possible, assembled my PC desk, and began connecting stuff as best I knew how. Now, since this time, I’ve built 3 PCs from scratch, all complete successes (back-pat, back-pat, thankyouverymuch), but that morning, I was (I thought) wisely referring to the “PC connections instructions, with easy-to-follow, color-coded pictures” foldout poster which came with my PC when it was brand new. Of course, black screen. Disconnect, reconnect. Black screen. I was completely convinced that I had connected everything properly (according to my HP poster) and that something inside had been broken or jostled loose in transit.
Pannicking, I realized that since I’d added the video card, my HP warranty was void, so I could not call HP tech support. Pannicking more, I searched a conveniently left behind phone book for a “PC repairs” shop, found the nearest one, and dropped it off just barely before they closed for the day. No, they would not look at it now… not even if I paid extra… and they did not work on Saturday… not even if I paid extra… in beer…
I spent the entire weekend staring at blank walls, reading, and trying to watch 2 snowy non-cable channels on a coat-hanger-antennaed 19-inch TV while my Civ2 CD mocked me from my desk. Misery is not a strong enough word.
I picked it up Tuesday after receiving a “it started right up and worked fine for us” report from the shop. Upon reconnecting everything at home again, I somehow immediately noticed my mistake and chose the video card monitor connector this time.
It makes me sad recounting this. I need a beer now.
Similar to some folks: Building my latest PC, I got everything assembled, set up beneath the desk, pressed the power button – nothing. Opened the case, checked that all components were seated, check. All motherboard-to-case connections correct, check. Power cord seated, power supply on, power cable plugged into power strip, power strip turned on… okay, try again. Nothing. Recheck the whole series. Components, check. Motherboard, check. Power cord… why is there so much slack in my power cord?
Turns out that I’d simply unplugged the old power cord from the PSU of the old machine and left it plugged into the power strip, meanwhile I’d plugged the new power cord into the new PSU and the three-prong plug was just sitting on the floor mocking me.
I think PC building has probably produced more profanity in my apartment than anything else.
So I’m trying to scan a magazine page to take with me to the store. Except every time I scanned it, the scan was the previous image I had scanned! So I went online, hunted down new drivers, did some googling to see if there were any issues, still wouldn’t scan properly. Finally I decided it just couldn’t be done and opened the printer to take the entire magazine with me instead of just the page and found that the previous page was still there, underneath the magazine page. I have no idea why I didn’t see it when I first put the magazine page into the printer.