Server found behind drywall
Dan Hartung
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0012
Summary of a very short, unsourced piece: server physically lost for
over four years; never lost a packet; with assistance of Novell [1],
cables traced to drywall put up by hapless maintenance staff. Rip down
wall, voila.
Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
very ULish air to it.
[1] Some comments have snarked that experts not required to trace
cables, but they may simply have been contractors.
[2] Worked at major insurance company for two years. Workgroup server
went down. Called data center. Data center denied all knowledge.
Eventually determined that server was lowly PS/2 sitting in locked
closet on our floor. If I'd known I had not only responsibility but
physical access I would have upgraded to Netware 4 long before ...
--
Dan Hartung
dan [at] dhartung (dot) com
Lake Effect weblog:
http://www.lakefx.nu/
Dan Hartung
Tony Sweeney
Dan Hartung
news:3AD3EF4D...@shell3.addr.com...
> The story is linked at slashdot.org, for what that's worth.
3 hours and still no signal. Typical.
Richard Evans
>Car 54, Where Are You?
>http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0012
>
>Summary of a very short, unsourced piece: server physically lost for
>over four years; never lost a packet; with assistance of Novell [1],
>cables traced to drywall put up by hapless maintenance staff. Rip down
>wall, voila.
>
>Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
>very ULish air to it.
When I first hear the story circa 1984, the server in question was an
IBM Series 1.
Dick Evans
Allodoxaphobia
When I first heard this Urban Legend, circa 1954, it concerned
a fully equipped machine shop on a U.S. Navy battleship/destroyer/
or the such, that had no passageway into it, and was only
discovered when the ship was decommissioned and scrapped.
I guess that would make it a *Nautical Legend*.
Jonesy
--
| Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | OS/2
| Gunnison, Colorado | @ | Jonesy | linux __
| 7,703' -- 2,345m | frontier.net | DM68mn SK
Susan Carroll-Clark
> Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
> very ULish air to it.
I can relate a very similar story. There is a very out-of-date website that
the indexing spider at my company (which has over 80,000 employees
nationwide) keeps bringing up. Someone called in a ticket to our help desk
and asked if we could locate the server the site is hosted on so that they
can pull down the site. Simply given the IP address, of course we can't.
We figure the thing is sitting under someone's desk somewhere, humming away,
its purpose forgotten, and no one's bothered to turn it off or unplug it
because it "might be important."
Susan "maybe they should arrange to have it hacked" Carroll-Clark
william...@nashville.com
>When I first heard this Urban Legend, circa 1954, it concerned
>a fully equipped machine shop on a U.S. Navy battleship/destroyer/
>or the such, that had no passageway into it, and was only
>discovered when the ship was decommissioned and scrapped.
worker being discovered in some void when the ship is scrapped.
Howard S Shubs
william...@nashville.com () wrote:
> The gruesome version is the bones of a long missing ship yard
> worker being discovered in some void when the ship is scrapped.
Here's a recent -confirmed- version:
http://DarwinAwards.com/cgi-bin/frames.cgi?/darwin/darwin2001-01.html
--
Howard S Shubs The Denim Adept
Jay R. Ashworth
Susan Carroll-Clark <nicola...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> > Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
> > very ULish air to it.
>
> I can relate a very similar story. There is a very out-of-date website that
> the indexing spider at my company (which has over 80,000 employees
> nationwide) keeps bringing up. Someone called in a ticket to our help desk
> and asked if we could locate the server the site is hosted on so that they
> can pull down the site. Simply given the IP address, of course we can't.
Traceroute.
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth j...@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff Baylink
The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 804 5015
Charles Richmond
a human skeleton in a huge room with *thousands* of file cabinets.
One of the skeleton's hands was reaching inside an open file drawer.
The man said: "It's Fred!!! I thought he retired ten years ago!!!"
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
cjt & trefoil
>
> This one time, at band camp,
> Susan Carroll-Clark <nicola...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> > > Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
> > > very ULish air to it.
> >
> > I can relate a very similar story. There is a very out-of-date website that
> > the indexing spider at my company (which has over 80,000 employees
> > nationwide) keeps bringing up. Someone called in a ticket to our help desk
> > and asked if we could locate the server the site is hosted on so that they
> > can pull down the site. Simply given the IP address, of course we can't.
>
> Traceroute.
>
That ought to get you within 100 meters +/-, but it still could be a
chore.
Adrian Edmonds
news:3AD66DC4...@prodigy.net...
conenction (assuming you can find that) what the electrical length is. That
should give you a clue. You can hire one.
--
/"\ Adrian Edmonds
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
X AGAINST HTML MAIL,
/ \ AND NEWS
John West McKenna
>A Time Domain Reflectometer(TDR) will tell you from the last traceroute hop
>conenction (assuming you can find that) what the electrical length is. That
>should give you a clue. You can hire one.
Apply an RF signal to one end of the wire. Follow it with an appropriately
tuned sniffer. I believe you can hire these too - I've known a few retic
people who wished they owned one.
Update your network map, with a note of when each bit of physical wire was
last sighted. It'll never stay up to date, but at least you might have an
idea just how inaccurate it is.
John
Joe Morris
>"Adrian Edmonds" <egg...@mailops.com> writes:
>>A Time Domain Reflectometer(TDR) will tell you from the last traceroute hop
>>conenction (assuming you can find that) what the electrical length is. That
>>should give you a clue. You can hire one.
>Apply an RF signal to one end of the wire. Follow it with an appropriately
>tuned sniffer. I believe you can hire these too - I've known a few retic
>people who wished they owned one.
Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
at the other end; all you need to do is wait for the repair request to
be filed.
Or apply even higher voltage to the wire and determine which office
produced the loud explosion sound.
Joe Morris
John Varela
wrote:
> Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
> from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
> at the other end; all you need to do is wait for the repair request to
> be filed.
>
> Or apply even higher voltage to the wire and determine which office
> produced the loud explosion sound.
Gee Joe, I'm glad you posted that. It explains a lot. But you guys never did
know our co-op students were laying ethernet cable through the ceiling of B
wing 2nd floor, right under (over?) Peggy's nose, did you? Or did you? I
certainly pretended to know nothing about it. At any rate, there were no
explosions. I see you're going to abandon that building. Good idea to do
that before the weight of cable collapses the ceilings.
--
John Varela
Paul Repacholi
> Car 54, Where Are You?
> http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0012
>
> Summary of a very short, unsourced piece: server physically lost for
> over four years; never lost a packet; with assistance of Novell [1],
> cables traced to drywall put up by hapless maintenance staff. Rip down
> wall, voila.
>
> Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
> very ULish air to it.
I can give a not UL one though.
A friend passed my name to a small business owner who was being told
he needed to 'upgrade' his system to a server and install M$ and some
windoze stuff to run his shop. I was short strawed to go have a look.
Turned up, he was busy for bit.
"Where is the computer?" She pointed at terminal, and I knew it was
one of those days. 20 min, and an owner later, we had sorted out the
difference between a computer and a terminal, agreed they did have one
somewhere, and found the phone number of the previous owner. He was
able to add that it was 'at the back' but could not remember where!
By this time, I was pretty sure I was hunting a Vax, probably a 3100
or VLC. Another 5 min found it, on a added in shelf at the top of the
broom cupboard. I think if we'd waited another day or two it would
have crashed through the shelf from the mass of dust built up in it!
Still there, still working, and the nice PC salesman is wonder how to
handle a sale that requires them to better the previous reliability.
No, he does not pay them for maintainance, they would have to pay him
LOTS if it needed it.
He did buy a pair of spare SCSI disks though :)
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd., +61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda. West
Australia 6076 Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
David Scheidt
: "Jay R. Ashworth" wrote:
:>
:> This one time, at band camp,
:> Susan Carroll-Clark <nicola...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
:> > > Anybody close to the source here? I can believe this[2], but it has a
:> > > very ULish air to it.
:> >
:> > I can relate a very similar story. There is a very out-of-date website that
:> > the indexing spider at my company (which has over 80,000 employees
:> > nationwide) keeps bringing up. Someone called in a ticket to our help desk
:> > and asked if we could locate the server the site is hosted on so that they
:> > can pull down the site. Simply given the IP address, of course we can't.
:>
:> Traceroute.
:>
: That ought to get you within 100 meters +/-, but it still could be a
: chore.
You turn off the hub or switch, and see who complains. I've had similiar
experiences, but with WAN equipment that was in a building that turned out
to be in a building now occupied by a different company, and to which we
hadn't had access in years.
--
dsch...@tumbolia.com
Bipedalism is only a fad.
David Powell
wrote:
>The gruesome version is the bones of a long missing ship yard
>worker being discovered in some void when the ship is scrapped.
The first iron ship with a double skinned hull was Brunel's Great
Eastern (1854). When she was scrapped, (1890) a skeleton was found
between the inner and outer hulls. Sometimes, it takes a while for the
problems created by a new technology to become apparent. .
Regards,
David P.
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
Bingo. Thanks for this reminder.
Now, I wonder what the real problem was:
- 12+ hour days, 6+ days per week;
- massive boozing on the job;
- dim &/or evil fellow workers;
- early version of Gameboy caused massive distraction.
Allodoxaphobia
Probably a Jimmy Hoffa-style disposition....
Chris Baird
> worker being discovered in some void when the ship is scrapped.
Didn't the steam-powered 'Great Western' have a similar story?
--
Chris,,
Donald Tees
"Allodoxaphobia" <Q...@QRM-QRN.net> wrote in message
news:slrn9dgtu...@animas.frontier.net...
> On 14 Apr 2001 11:02:28 GMT, Heinz W. Wiggeshoff scribbled:
> >David Powell (ddotp...@netnospamscapeonline.co.uk) writes:
> >> On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 04:01:18 GMT, william...@nashville.com ()
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>>The gruesome version is the bones of a long missing ship yard
> >>>worker being discovered in some void when the ship is scrapped.
> >>
> >> The first iron ship with a double skinned hull was Brunel's Great
> >> Eastern (1854). When she was scrapped, (1890) a skeleton was found
> >> between the inner and outer hulls. Sometimes, it takes a while for the
> >> problems created by a new technology to become apparent. .
> >
> > Bingo. Thanks for this reminder.
> >
> > Now, I wonder what the real problem was:
> > - 12+ hour days, 6+ days per week;
> > - massive boozing on the job;
> > - dim &/or evil fellow workers;
> > - early version of Gameboy caused massive distraction.
>
> Probably a Jimmy Hoffa-style disposition....
>
> Jonesy
Congradulations, gentlemen. You have finally discovered the true story
behind the mystery of the pyramids. It seems that when they first started
using stone as a building material ...
jmfb...@aol.com
jcmo...@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) wrote:
>jo...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (John "West" McKenna) writes:
>
>>"Adrian Edmonds" <egg...@mailops.com> writes:
>
>>>A Time Domain Reflectometer(TDR) will tell you from the last traceroute
hop
>>>conenction (assuming you can find that) what the electrical length is.
That
>>>should give you a clue. You can hire one.
>
>>Apply an RF signal to one end of the wire. Follow it with an
appropriately
>>tuned sniffer. I believe you can hire these too - I've known a few retic
>>people who wished they owned one.
>
>Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
>from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
>at the other end; all you need to do is wait for the repair request to
>be filed.
Oh, no. Not in our work area. If you did that in our area, the
loop back test would produce a very angry software engineer. MOst
of our software engineers could make you wish you were dead before
they were through teaching you "not to do that". ;-)
>Or apply even higher voltage to the wire and determine which office
>produced the loud explosion sound.
Our ceiling was filled with cables (most had been laid in
the middle of the night). Because most people had strong
self-preservation instincts, none were "cleaned up" because
noone had any idea if the wire was getting used. In one
case, the wire that nobody could ever use happened to be
the key to a very major time-constrained project. Touching
that wire caused a delay with a result of ripples all the
way up to the prez and back down again to the poor slob who
touched the wire.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Don Stokes
>Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
>from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
>at the other end; all you need to do is wait for the repair request to
>be filed.
Doesn't work. Ethernet devices have rather more electrical isolation
than that. I've demonstrated this myself, thanks to a parallel-port
ethernet adapter with a faulty external power supply that managed to put
240V down the line.
-- don
Adrian Edmonds
"Paul Repacholi" <pr...@prep.synonet.com> wrote in message
news:87ofu0a...@prep.synonet.com...
environmental cycler for automative alternator regulators (over 4 tons )
which required a lot of care and feeding including chilled water. It was
late one night when I discovered that some dork had inadverently connected
the high pressure nitrogen line to the supposedly 1 atmosphere chilled water
supply. It was then I found out why some of our machines had water detectors
built into the base of the cabinets.
Joe Morris
You think you're making a funny? Back when those <uncivil adjectives
deleted> Wang word processors were infesting the facility we *did* have
not one but two ceiling collapse incidents.
For those among the readership who have been blessed by not having to
work with those <more uncivil adjectives deleted> pieces of <deleted>,
the Wang systems used proprietary (of course) dumb terminals, each
of which was connected by two coax lines to the central Wang controller.
When the terminals first began to appear the obvious place to run the
wires was in the space above the suspended ceiling, and that plan worked
well. As more terminals were installed, however, each one added two more
coax lines, and finally one of those lines was the traditional straw that
broke the traditional camel's back.
That corridor was rebraced but another wing had its ceiling fail perhaps
a year later.
Thankfully, I never had anything to do with the Wang stuff except for
being told to house the controllers for a while in the computer center
I managed.
BTW: we aren't abandoning the building yet. I'm supposed to move back
into C-wing first floor this summer.
Also BTW: yes, we *did* know about it. As long as it went from your
peoples' offices directly to your labs we chose to politely ignore it.
Joe Morris
Ian Stirling
>In article <9b6t1k$3j$1...@top.mitre.org>, Joe Morris <jcmo...@mitre.org> wrote:
>>Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
>>from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
>Doesn't work. Ethernet devices have rather more electrical isolation
>than that. I've demonstrated this myself, thanks to a parallel-port
>ethernet adapter with a faulty external power supply that managed to put
>240V down the line.
Common mode, yes, they may well not fare so well with a differential voltage
on the signal lines.
--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
If God hadn't intended us to eat animals,
He wouldn't have made them out of MEAT! - John Cleese
Tim Shoppa
>
>Don Stokes <d...@news.daedalus.co.nz> wrote:
>>In article <9b6t1k$3j$1...@top.mitre.org>, Joe Morris <jcmo...@mitre.org> wrote:
>>>Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
>>>from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
><snip>
>
>>Doesn't work. Ethernet devices have rather more electrical isolation
>>than that. I've demonstrated this myself, thanks to a parallel-port
>>ethernet adapter with a faulty external power supply that managed to put
>>240V down the line.
>
>Common mode, yes, they may well not fare so well with a differential voltage
>on the signal lines.
For coax (thinnet or thicknet), a 240Volt difference on the signal lines
would result in a power dissipation of (240V)**2/50Ohms = 1.152 kilowatts
in the terminators. I don't think they'd take that for very long :-).
I think twisted pair has a slightly larger nominal impedance, but the
principle is the same!
Tim.
John Varela
wrote:
> Also BTW: yes, we *did* know about it. As long as it went from your
> peoples' offices directly to your labs we chose to politely ignore it.
Well there you are. I knew about them stringing cable from office to office
but knew nothing about cables to the lab. Best not to have known.
--
John Varela
Don Stokes
Ian Stirling <Inqui...@I.am> wrote:
>Don Stokes <d...@news.daedalus.co.nz> wrote:
>>In article <9b6t1k$3j$1...@top.mitre.org>, Joe Morris <jcmo...@mitre.org> wrote:
>>>Apply line voltage to the router end of the wire (after disconnecting it
>>>from the router!). That should get the attention of whoever/whatever is
><snip>
>
>>Doesn't work. Ethernet devices have rather more electrical isolation
>>than that. I've demonstrated this myself, thanks to a parallel-port
>>ethernet adapter with a faulty external power supply that managed to put
>>240V down the line.
>
>Common mode, yes, they may well not fare so well with a differential voltage
>on the signal lines.
I think you'll find that high differential voltages are also catered for,
simply for safety reasons. Telephone infrastruture uses surprisingly
high voltages (70-100 V is common), and UTP ethernet is intended to
share the same cable infrastruture -- while the pairs used are different
(typically pair 1 for phone, pairs 2 & 3 for ethernet), allowances have
to be made for errors in patching or pinning.
-- don
freddy1X
Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space station.
--
this device complies with FCC rules Part 15
/\>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>\/
/\ I may be demented \/
/\ but I'm not crazy! \/
/\<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\/
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *
|| attatch FLAME here ||
\/ \/
X
Lars Poulsen
> For those among the readership who have been blessed by not having to
> work with those <more uncivil adjectives deleted> pieces of <deleted>,
> the Wang systems used proprietary (of course) dumb terminals, each
> of which was connected by two coax lines to the central Wang controller.
The Wang systems with the twin coax cables (one with BNC connectors
and on with TNC) were NOT dumb terminals, but Z80 micros. In the
WPS (Word Processing System) and OIS (Office Information System)
versions, most of the system ran in those "terminals" and the
central controller was basically just a file server. If I remember
correctly, the "terminals" had 64 KB of memory. In the VS system
(which Wang tried to position as a small mainframe, but which was
really much more like an IBM S/34) I think the "terminal" microcode
was just used for field validation of the data entry screens.
It got really interesting, when the WPS option was loaded on the
VS system, and the terminal processors had to switch back and
forth between VS mode and data entry mode. The VS version of WP
never seemed to get as stable as the original WPS.
I was the national technical pre- and post sales software support
manager for Wang in Denmark from about 1976 to 1980, and was
responsible for localization of keyboards and menus for WPS, OIS
and VS. It became very interesting, because the Norvegian office
had screwed up by adopting the fucked-up keyboard that DEC had
put on the LA36 (DecWriter II), and I (who worked for an independent
reseller rep) had to convince corporate in Lowell to do it right.
We also had unbelieveable difficulties getting Lowell to believe
that European governments were serious about workplace ergonomics,
and unless we got terminal with detached low-profile keyboards
we would soon be barred from selling the equipment. I finally
understood just how far behind the US was, when I visited the
corporate HQ in Lowell, and saw a receptionist trying to type
while balanced on a barstool in front of a terminal perched on
a pedestal that was a 12" circle on top of a 5" high column
in the middle of a floor. OSHA must not have been invented yet
(spring 1980). I knew then that it was hopeless for me to pursue
ergonomics. However, at about the same time, some US government
project had required the development of a packaging of the terminal
on an enclosure with a detached keyboard. The keyboard was about
2.5 inches tall, and the thing was even uglier than the old model,
but we thought it would give us a year before the Euro authorities
discovered that it really wasn't an improvement. Fortunately,
I changed jobs very sooon after that.
--
/ Lars Poulsen - http://www.cmc.com/lars - la...@cmc.com
125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277
jmfb...@aol.com
Our ceilings ended up have metal ladders put up in them. They
were used as troughs for all that wire. The ladders kept
everybody on the "road"...I guess this was the difference
between automobiles and snowmobiles.
Ian Stirling
>In article <987430983.1046.0...@news.demon.co.uk>,
>Ian Stirling <Inqui...@I.am> wrote:
>>Common mode, yes, they may well not fare so well with a differential voltage
>>on the signal lines.
>I think you'll find that high differential voltages are also catered for,
>simply for safety reasons. Telephone infrastruture uses surprisingly
>high voltages (70-100 V is common), and UTP ethernet is intended to
>share the same cable infrastruture -- while the pairs used are different
>(typically pair 1 for phone, pairs 2 & 3 for ethernet), allowances have
>to be made for errors in patching or pinning.
Phone lines have an impedance of around 600 ohms, and a voltage of 60V
or so at the exchange end.
The maximum power that can be gotten from a phone line is on the order of
a watt.
The power that can be gotten from 240V mains, into a 50 ohm load is plenty
to make it explode, and if it goes short, to melt the cable.
--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
'Where subtlety fails, we must simply make do with cream pies' -- David Brin
Dave Daniels
freddy1X <fred...@indyx.net> wrote:
> Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
> security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space station.
Please, I beg you, do forget that one. The only reason to mention
it is a desire to inflict pain on the poor unfortunates who saw it
and who have strived to bury the memory ever since. Some episodes
of Babylon 5 truly brought home the meaning of the word "dire" but
that one was in a league of its own.
Dave Daniels
Eric Smith
> Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
> security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space station.
Yes, that was just about the least plausible episode of the whole series.
Completely disregarding space for the moment, when ANYTHING large is built,
do you really think that they could fail to meet the specs by that much and
yet have noone notice? For instance, if you contract out to have a 30-story
office building built, and it turns out to only have 29 stories, don't you
think *someone* is going to investigate how that happened? And that they
will notice if there really are 30 stories but the elevator fails to stop
on one of them?
Keith F. Lynch
> There is a very out-of-date website ... We figure the thing is
> sitting under someone's desk somewhere, humming away, its purpose
> forgotten, and no one's bothered to turn it off or unplug it because
> it "might be important."
I wonder how many forgotten and abandoned web sites are destined to
stay up *forever*? Given that the cost of disk space and bandwidth
are low and continuing to drop, it's easier to keep pages online
forever than to keep track of what ones should be taken down.
For instance, I know of two dead people who still have home pages:
Sasha Chislenko, who died a year ago:
http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html
Jim Gallagher, who died four years ago:
http://www.deltanet.com/users/jim
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail sent to thousands of randomly collected
addresses is not acceptable, and I do complain to the spammer's ISP.
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com "Eric Smith" writes:
> Completely disregarding space for the moment, when ANYTHING large is built,
> do you really think that they could fail to meet the specs by that much and
> yet have noone notice?
Well the statistics (those that were produced to justify DoD's push to
Ada) maintain that of all DoD systems ordered, only 2% worked as desired
and were delivered.
IIRC, something like 40% were nothing like what was wanted (*or*
required) and never had a hope of working. Etc., etc., ...
So in the case of software, it seemed to be the norm.
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being incr-
easingly capable." Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs
Paul Guertin
> freddy1X <fred...@indyx.net> writes:
> > Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
> > security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space station.
>
> Yes, that was just about the least plausible episode of the whole series.
Just think of it as JMS's tribute to Star Trek: Voyager.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Tim Shoppa
>
>freddy1X <fred...@indyx.net> writes:
>> Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
>> security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space station.
>
>Yes, that was just about the least plausible episode of the whole series.
>Completely disregarding space for the moment, when ANYTHING large is built,
>do you really think that they could fail to meet the specs by that much and
>yet have noone notice?
I think so - after all, construction is an "engineering" issue and all the
main characters on Babylon 5 were "politicians" and "managers". (OK, one
of them was a politician who came back from the dead, but even that doesn't
make him all-knowing!)
Just for comparison, I'm sure that 90% of the people who work in my building
don't know that the floor I work on even exists. And that 9 of the 10% who
do know are either janitorial staff or techies who work in my group.
Yes, I know, "security through obscurity"
and the fact that I work deep below Washington DC have something to do with
this... the trip to my office in the morning looks disturbingly similar to
the introduction to _Get Smart_, with a maze of narrow corridors, large
metal doors, and elevator shafts.
Tim.
William Robison
Tim Shoppa wrote:
> > > > > > > > >>>>>>
> Yes, I know, "security through obscurity"
> and the fact that I work deep below Washington DC have something to do with
> this... the trip to my office in the morning looks disturbingly similar to
> the introduction to _Get Smart_, with a maze of narrow corridors, large
> metal doors, and elevator shafts.
>
> Tim.
So Tim, can you post a picture of your shoe-phone???
-Willy
:-)
Tim Shoppa
Due to budget cutbacks, it has been converted into a shoe-pay-phone :-). That
always was one of my favorite episodes!
In central control, two floors above me (but still well underground), we did
have a booth for recording PA announcements jokingly called "the cone of
silence". It worked about as well for that purpose as the one on the
TV show, too. Now they just turn on the yellow rotating light and everyone is
supposed to be quiet.
Tim. (whose badge number really does begin with double-oh).
Neil Barnes
<qhg0f7q...@ruckus.brouhaha.com>:
This is presumably why leftpondian buildings[1] seem to be built without a
thirteenth floor, and start counting at 'one' instead of a sensible
'ground'. You can hide a high percentage of floors that way!
[1] Well, at least the small subset of tall leftpondian buildings I've
actually visited...
--
--
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
barnacle
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
Jeff Jonas
>thirteenth floor, and start counting at 'one' instead of a sensible
>'ground'. You can hide a high percentage of floors that way!
I'd expect MIT elevators to have a number line with -2, -1, 0, +1, ...
and perhaps imaginary numbers for those with front/rear doors.
As to no 13th floor, it's not just superstition,
sometimes the 13th floor is not for people,
it's all utilities (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning, pipes, etc).
Some tall buildings make it obvious from the outside:
the 13, 26, ... floors are all shutters for ventilation,
or fake windows to match the rest of the building.
--
Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@panix(dot)com
The original Dr. JCL and Mr .hide
Dan Hartung
news:9bkjtd$frf$1...@panix6.panix.com...
Not to jump to conclusions. The 13th floor is certainly present in
many corporate buildings; it isn't omitted as much as it used to be,
and the main place it will be is in a building with many tenants, so
that no tenant need have its primary address on that floor.
And utility floors are usually closer together, e.g. one building I
worked in they were every 8 floors.
Pete Fenelon
>
> And utility floors are usually closer together, e.g. one building I
> worked in they were every 8 floors.
>
I've heard tell of some buildings (banking-related and very IT-heavy)
where every other floor is utilities...
pete
Prof Karl Kleine
>>This is presumably why leftpondian buildings[1] seem to be built without a
>>thirteenth floor, and start counting at 'one' instead of a sensible
>>'ground'. You can hide a high percentage of floors that way!
>
> I'd expect MIT elevators to have a number line with -2, -1, 0, +1, ...
> and perhaps imaginary numbers for those with front/rear doors.
Well, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany, is built on a hillside. There are
some buildings where you enter at at level 0 on the one side, and the elevators
on the other end of the building go from something like -8 to 10. Can't give
you the correct numbers, as i studied there in the early 70ies, but it's
approximately that range for the group of N-buildings (sciences): -8 to 10,
maybe even a wider range on some of them.
Karl Kleine
John Price
> For instance, I know of two dead people who still have home pages:
With a bit of perl, they could be replying to emails as well!
Charles Richmond
out that you work in Washington, D.C.....
I guess that our old computer systems and software are pretty secure
then...because to the "average person" they are pretty obscure...but
then the "average person" can *not* name both Senators from their state...
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Charles Richmond
>
> Eric Smith <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> wrote in
> <qhg0f7q...@ruckus.brouhaha.com>:
>
> >freddy1X <fred...@indyx.net> writes:
> >> Don't forget the episode of the TV series "Babalon 5", where the
> >> security officer discovered an entire missing deck on the space
> >> station.
> >
> >Yes, that was just about the least plausible episode of the whole
> >series. Completely disregarding space for the moment, when ANYTHING
> >large is built, do you really think that they could fail to meet the
> >specs by that much and yet have noone notice? For instance, if you
> >contract out to have a 30-story office building built, and it turns out
> >to only have 29 stories, don't you think *someone* is going to
> >investigate how that happened? And that they will notice if there
> >really are 30 stories but the elevator fails to stop on one of them?
> >
> >
>
> This is presumably why leftpondian buildings[1] seem to be built without a
> thirteenth floor, and start counting at 'one' instead of a sensible
> 'ground'. You can hide a high percentage of floors that way!
>
about the word for "four" and the word for "death" sounding similar in
Japanese...
Charles Richmond
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>
> Not to jump to conclusions. The 13th floor is certainly present in
> many corporate buildings; it isn't omitted as much as it used to be,
> and the main place it will be is in a building with many tenants, so
> that no tenant need have its primary address on that floor.
>
were letters too, but... You would think that the state would *not*
issue a car license with 666 on it... As it turned out, I think she was
a paranoid schizophrenic, and the 666 did *not* help her any...
William Robison
Be careful, or we'll be forced to off-topic even further and
bring up the Beverly-Hillbillies...
-Willy
:-)
Ralph Wade Phillips
Charles Richmond <rich...@ev1.net> wrote in message
news:3ADE8298...@ev1.net...
>
> I guess that our old computer systems and software are pretty secure
> then...because to the "average person" they are pretty obscure...but
> then the "average person" can *not* name both Senators from their state...
!I! can - Sen. Bluster and Sen. Fogghorn <grins>
RwP
Jeff Jonas
>That's kinda spooky.
>With a bit of perl, they could be replying to emails as well!
I can't find the reference right now, but there was a similar quandry
for furrymuck (an online role playing system): what to do with a character
and all the virtual "objects" of a player when the person dies.
Since the character and RL [real-life] person behind the character was so
well loved, not only was there an online funeral, but folks wanted one
last look at things for personal archives of personalized messages and actions.
I guess things like "Willmaker" will soon have stock phrases for
handing over virtual property!
It's not too far fetched: artists have the rights to their creations
(ex: Charles Schulz clearly stated that NOBODY may draw the "Peanuts"
characters after his death).
Charlie Gibbs
writes:
>>This is presumably why leftpondian buildings[1] seem to be built
>>without a thirteenth floor, and start counting at 'one' instead of
>>a sensible 'ground'. You can hide a high percentage of floors that
>>way!
Some of our older buildings mark the ground floor on the elevator
buttons with a 'G' - but the next floor is still numbered 2.
You're right, it'd be much nicer if they took a cue from us
computer people and started numbering at zero.
>I'd expect MIT elevators to have a number line with -2, -1, 0, +1, ...
>and perhaps imaginary numbers for those with front/rear doors.
Didn't someone once write numbers in between the floor numbers
so it went something like 1, sqrt(2), 2, e, 3, pi, 4...
>As to no 13th floor, it's not just superstition,
>sometimes the 13th floor is not for people,
>it's all utilities (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning, pipes, etc).
>Some tall buildings make it obvious from the outside:
>the 13, 26, ... floors are all shutters for ventilation,
>or fake windows to match the rest of the building.
A building I once worked in had about 23 floors. For some reason
the HVAC eqiupment (and a couple of racquetball courts) were on the
6th floor, so it even showed up on the elevator.
My favourite is the 7 1/2 floor in the movie "Being John Malkovich".
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Allodoxaphobia
>
>> For instance, I know of two dead people who still have home pages:
>That's kinda spooky.
>With a bit of perl, they could be replying to emails as well!
Subject: Fred Schwartz is out of the coffin.
Jonesy
--
| Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | OS/2
| Gunnison, Colorado | @ | Jonesy | linux __
| 7,703' -- 2,345m | frontier.net | DM68mn SK
George R. Gonzalez
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote in message started numbering at
zero.
>
> >I'd expect MIT elevators to have a number line with -2, -1, 0, +1, ...
> >and perhaps imaginary numbers for those with front/rear doors.
At a certain university, the Civil Engineering dept got the idea to build
their new 7-story building underground, waay underground. There was enough
money for rock-blasting, so the booms started.
They soon found out why this kind of construction isnt often done-- the
water table gets in the way.
But they persisted and found good dry solid rock quite a ways farther down.
So the building ended up with floors 0, -1, -2, -3, ...... (long pause as
elevator skips soggy area... ) -14, -15,-16.
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by "George R. Gonzalez" <gr...@flash.net>:
>
> At a certain university, the Civil Engineering dept got the idea to build
> their new 7-story building underground, waay underground. There was enough
> money for rock-blasting, so the booms started.
The university of Illinois undergrad library is also known as the
underground library. I vaguely recall that it goes down about 4
levels. The roof is a patio at ground level.
> They soon found out why this kind of construction isnt often done-- the
> water table gets in the way.
This didn't seem to bother the folks at Illinois. The water table is
probably about 8 feet down in that part of town. All of Champaign Illinois
is flat, very flat! The glacial till is deep enough that I doubt they
had to blast any rock to build the thing.
And then, there's the coal mine in the basement at Carnegie Mellon
University. I have no idea how far that goes, either into the hill or
down. 80 years ago, it seems that the mining engineering program there
had student's digging the coal for the university power plant.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
David Scheidt
: At a certain university, the Civil Engineering dept got the idea to build
: their new 7-story building underground, waay underground. There was enough
: money for rock-blasting, so the booms started.
: They soon found out why this kind of construction isnt often done-- the
: water table gets in the way.
: But they persisted and found good dry solid rock quite a ways farther down.
: So the building ended up with floors 0, -1, -2, -3, ...... (long pause as
: elevator skips soggy area... ) -14, -15,-16.
Does this certain university have a name? This story sounds very unlikely,
for all sorts of reasons.
--
dsch...@tumbolia.com
Bipedalism is only a fad.
John Homes
> I knew a girl in college whose license number was 666...of course, there
> were letters too, but... You would think that the state would *not*
> issue a car license with 666 on it... As it turned out, I think she was
> a paranoid schizophrenic, and the 666 did *not* help her any...
>
A coworker told us about the neighbour she had, who bought the vanity plate
"666". He gave it up, after his car was firebombed for the third time.
John Homes
Alan Barclay
Charles Richmond <rich...@ev1.net> wrote:
>I have heard that many Japanese hotels also have *no* fourth floor...something
>about the word for "four" and the word for "death" sounding similar in
>Japanese...
The building I'm in has no 4, 13, 14, or 24 floors.
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
cgi...@sky.bus.com "Charlie Gibbs" writes:
> My favourite is the 7 1/2 floor in the movie "Being John Malkovich".
At Aston University, there are a pair of lifts side by side in the foyer
of "a" main building. However, they are actually servicing the floors of
two buildings that happen to meet in that corner. The two buildings have
different "storey pitches", so that for having travelled the same
vertical height, in one of the lifts one will have gone up five floors,
whilst in the other one will have gone six.
It's therefore *essential* to get in the correct lift, since, except for
one (or two?) pairs of floors, the levels of the others are different in
the two buildings, so it not possible to walk between them except on that
particular floor. It's quite weird to be able to get out of the lift at
floor 5 (IIRC), walk about four yards partly round a corner to the other
lift and find one is on floor 6.
Howard S Shubs
gor...@elaine.furryape.com (Alan Barclay) wrote:
> The building I'm in has no 4, 13, 14, or 24 floors.
3 stories tall, huh?
--
Howard S Shubs The Denim Adept
Howard S Shubs
"John Homes" <John....@eds.com> wrote:
> A coworker told us about the neighbour she had, who bought the vanity plate
> "666". He gave it up, after his car was firebombed for the third time.
How 'bout Interstate 666, spur 6 off of Interstate 66? I understand they
-did- build it.
Eric Fischer
> How 'bout Interstate 666, spur 6 off of Interstate 66? I understand they
> -did- build it.
There's US 666 from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT, probably numbered
that way to refer to old US 66. I-66, as far as I know, only runs
from Washington, DC to western Virginia, so the only existing road
that could reasonably be numbered I-666 would be the DC beltway.
eric
David Scheidt
: Howard S Shubs <hsh...@mindspring.com> wrote:
:> How 'bout Interstate 666, spur 6 off of Interstate 66? I understand they
:> -did- build it.
: There's US 666 from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT, probably numbered
: that way to refer to old US 66. I-66, as far as I know, only runs
They de-US routed that recently, I thought. One or more of the states still
calls it state highway 666.
David
cjt & trefoil
dormant sites.
"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:
>
> Susan Carroll-Clark <nicola...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> > There is a very out-of-date website ... We figure the thing is
> > sitting under someone's desk somewhere, humming away, its purpose
> > forgotten, and no one's bothered to turn it off or unplug it because
> > it "might be important."
>
> I wonder how many forgotten and abandoned web sites are destined to
> stay up *forever*? Given that the cost of disk space and bandwidth
> are low and continuing to drop, it's easier to keep pages online
> forever than to keep track of what ones should be taken down.
>
> For instance, I know of two dead people who still have home pages:
>
> Sasha Chislenko, who died a year ago:
> http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html
>
> Jim Gallagher, who died four years ago:
> http://www.deltanet.com/users/jim
> --
> Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
> I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
> unsolicited bulk e-mail sent to thousands of randomly collected
> addresses is not acceptable, and I do complain to the spammer's ISP.
cjt & trefoil
(Randall Lab, much of which is underground) floated on
shock mounts.
Howard S Shubs
wrote:
> There's US 666 from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT, probably numbered
> that way to refer to old US 66. I-66, as far as I know, only runs
> from Washington, DC to western Virginia, so the only existing road
> that could reasonably be numbered I-666 would be the DC beltway.
Correction accepted. US666 instead of I666.
Joe Morris
No such luck: the Washington Beltway carries I-95 on its eastern
part, and is otherwise known as I-495. Lots of people, however,
would probably agree that calling it I-666 would be appropriate. <g>
It wouldn't really be likely, however: I-66 deadends at the western
end of the Mall, so the Beltway wouldn't be a bypass or spur
Interstate route.
Joe Morris (whose evening commute includes I-66)
Paul Grayson
news:9boitc$q5r$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > How 'bout Interstate 666, spur 6 off of Interstate 66? I understand
they
> > -did- build it.
>
> There's US 666 from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT, probably numbered
> that way to refer to old US 66. I-66, as far as I know, only runs
> from Washington, DC to western Virginia, so the only existing road
> that could reasonably be numbered I-666 would be the DC beltway.
In England there is an A666. It passes from north of Blackburn, Lancashire
south, through the centre of Bolton and then joins the nearby motorway.
As a Yorkshireman, I find that quite appropriate.
John Todd
>In article <1465.508T4...@sky.bus.com>
> cgi...@sky.bus.com "Charlie Gibbs" writes:
>
>> My favourite is the 7 1/2 floor in the movie "Being John Malkovich".
>
>At Aston University, there are a pair of lifts side by side in the foyer
>of "a" main building. However, they are actually servicing the floors of
>two buildings that happen to meet in that corner. The two buildings have
>different "storey pitches", so that for having travelled the same
>vertical height, in one of the lifts one will have gone up five floors,
>whilst in the other one will have gone six.
>
>It's therefore *essential* to get in the correct lift, since, except for
>one (or two?) pairs of floors, the levels of the others are different in
>the two buildings, so it not possible to walk between them except on that
>particular floor. It's quite weird to be able to get out of the lift at
>floor 5 (IIRC), walk about four yards partly round a corner to the other
>lift and find one is on floor 6.
>
built by a firm of Saxon engineers, and one by Celts.....
--
John E. Todd jt...@island.net
Internet for All!
jchausler
"Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879" wrote:
> And then, there's the coal mine in the basement at Carnegie Mellon
> University. I have no idea how far that goes, either into the hill or
> down. 80 years ago, it seems that the mining engineering program there
> had student's digging the coal for the university power plant.
When I was there in the late 60's I always wanted to explore this but
IIRC they were storing radioactive materials in it (or maybe just boxes
so labeled to scare off inquisitive under grads....)
Chris
AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE
$$
Jeff Jonas
>>At Aston University, there are a pair of lifts side by side in the foyer
>>It's quite weird to be able to get out of the lift at
>>floor 5 (IIRC), walk about four yards partly round a corner to the other
>>lift and find one is on floor 6.
>This is a classic! Now if you could demonstrate that one was
>built by a firm of Saxon engineers, and one by Celts.....
Lunacon (Science Fiction convention) is held in
The Rye Town Hilton, Rye Brook, New York,
dubbed the "Escher" Hilton by fandom due to the layout of the hotel.
You can walk from the fourth floor of the Escher Hilton to the seventh
without going up or down any stairs!
(I think that's due to it being several connected buildings on a hill)
George R. Gonzalez
"David Scheidt" <dsch...@tumbolia.com> wrote in message
news:9bnej0$9r$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
Here's a picture of it-- names erased to protect the dummies:
http://home.flash.net/~grg1/stuff/facilities%20civil%20engineering%20buildin
g.htm
Joe Pfeiffer
> Here's a picture of it-- names erased to protect the dummies:
>
> http://home.flash.net/~grg1/stuff/facilities%20civil%20engineering%20buildin
> g.htm
Unfortunately, the picture links were broken. Hmmm.... a few seconds
with Google and
http://www.ce.umn.edu/facility/cive/
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
SWNMRSEF: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair
hotkey
>Here's a picture of it-- names erased to protect the dummies:
>
>http://home.flash.net/~grg1/stuff/facilities%20civil%20engineering%20building.htm
>
Why did you go through all that pain to "erase" the name, when a
Google search easily gives you the real deal:
http://www.ce.umn.edu/facility/cive/
(University of Minnesota )
--
hotkey
hot...@nospam.step.polymtl.ca
Alan J. Wylie
> In England there is an A666. It passes from north of Blackburn,
> Lancashire south, through the centre of Bolton and then joins the
> nearby motorway.
Also note the long-time .uk ISP demon, all of whose PoP phone numbers
end with 666, dating back to the days when you needed to have enough
that most of the population had one that was only a local phone call
away.
http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/numbers/geographical.shtml
Note, however
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4143054,00.html
The item "Demons be gone"
--
Alan J. Wylie http://www.glaramara.freeserve.co.uk/
"Perfection [in design] is achieved not when there is nothing left to add,
but rather when there is nothing left to take away."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Charles Richmond
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Charles Richmond
*all* of his chemical bottles as *poison* for the same reason...to
keep people from messing with them...
Charles Richmond
numbers are defined thus:
o 1
o o 3
o o o 6
o o o o 10
o o o o o 15
o o o o o o 21
...and so on. The n-th triangular number is the sum of the first "n" integers.
The 37th such number is 666.
In a (related???) vein, 1937 saw several notable bad things occured...the
Hindenburg burned, Emelia Ehrhart's flight was lost, and in Texas, an
elementary school exploded killing several *hundred* students... Also, one
of my grandfathers was killed in an explosion at an oil well site...
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
>
...
> Hindenburg burned, Emelia Ehrhart's flight was lost, and in Texas, an
> elementary school exploded killing several *hundred* students
Could you elaborate on the last disaster?
{Ob A.F.C. could a computer have averted this?}
John West McKenna
>> In a (related???) vein, 1937 saw several notable bad things occured...the
>> Hindenburg burned, Emelia Ehrhart's flight was lost, and in Texas, an
>> elementary school exploded killing several *hundred* students
> Could you elaborate on the last disaster?
> {Ob A.F.C. could a computer have averted this?}
I'd expect if a computer was involved, it all would have been much worse.
THe Hindenburg's navigation system would have aimed for a point several
meters below the centre of a large city. Emilia Ehrhart's flight would
have been grossly over-booked, with at least a dozen passengers on board
(mostly strapped to the wings) when it vanished. All of the school
students would have been in the computer lab, so engrossed in their game of
quake that they didn't notice the place explode. There would have been no
survivors.
On the other hand, just imagine how WWII would have turned out if Germany
had been satisfied with their Sim City "Virtual Poland" and not bothered to
invade the real thing.
John
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
>
> On the other hand, just imagine how WWII would have turned out if Germany
> had been satisfied with their Sim City "Virtual Poland" and not bothered to
> invade the real thing.
Let's continue the Sim. No intervention by "left pondians" in the
1939-today in Europe. Shorter war there, Communists defeated.
Less a.f.c - why? No need to calculate the hurling of 2 tons of
buck shot for 20 miles as one battleship greets another.
Enigma is just that, and Turing has other interests.
No nuclear arms race, (Russian peasants are a threat?), thus no need
for supercomputers.
And finally, some kids my age would have lived to their 52nd birthday
instead of being slaughtered in a pointless hi-tech war in VietNam.
Pardon my cynicism.
Julian Thomas
>A coworker told us about the neighbour she had, who bought the vanity
>plate "666". He gave it up, after his car was firebombed for the third
>time.
So he switched it to 29A ??
--
Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove letter a for email (or switch . and @)
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc
http://www.possi.org
-- --
Windows: From the people who brought you EDLIN!
David Scheidt
Common sense would have helped. The school was heated by raw natural gas
from a nearby well. Natural gas has no smell, and the stuff that you get in
your home has a malodorant, almost always mercaptan, added which gives it a
distinctive smell. There was a leak of some sort, the building filled with
gas, someone started a motor and Boom! 300 people dead.
Simon Slavin
"John Price" <g.pr...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > For instance, I know of two dead people who still have home pages:
> That's kinda spooky.
> With a bit of perl, they could be replying to emails as well!
"If you receive this bounce message I am now dead. ..."
Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | There's a *reason* why talk.politics.* is
No junk email please. | unreadable. It's because people talk about
| politics there. -- Nathan Tenny
Mac OS X. Because making Unix user-friendly is easier than debugging Windows.
Ric Werme
Some friends of mine did go in and brought a geiger counter along.
Yes, there was radioactive materials in drums. However, it was pretty
cool and no significant concern.
While we're on the subject, anyone know where I can get a depleted Uranium
shell, preferably one that did not go through an Iraqi tank? My father
left me his Uranium oxide, so I figure I ought to add to the collection
for my daughter. :-)
-Ric Werme
--
Ric Werme | we...@nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete
sw...@nol.net
> When I was there in the late 60's I always wanted to explore this but
> IIRC they were storing radioactive materials in it (or maybe just boxes
> so labeled to scare off inquisitive under grads....)
I've heard of the opposite happening at my alma mater. They found some
highly radioactive half spheres while preparing to tear down one of the
older labs. Trying to dispose of them legally would've raised too many
questions with the DOE, so they ended up un someone else's lab.
--
Mike Swaim, Avatar of Chaos: Disclaimer:I sometimes lie.
Home: swaim at nol * net Quote: "Boingie"^4 Y,W&D
Charles Richmond
a law that says stinch (mercaptan) *has* to be put into natural gas
before it
is piped to someone's home or business... FYI, it only takes a very *small*
amount of stinch in a *large* amount of natural gas...
I suppose if there had been a small computer-operated sensor that could detect
the colorless and odorless natural gas...perhaps a computer *could* have averted
the disaster...
Howard S Shubs
wrote:
> I've heard of the opposite happening at my alma mater. They found some
> highly radioactive half spheres while preparing to tear down one of the
> older labs. Trying to dispose of them legally would've raised too many
> questions with the DOE, so they ended up un someone else's lab.
You mean, they didn't put the spheres together? Gee, why not...
--
Howard S Shubs
"Run in circles, scream and shout!" "I hope you have good backups!"
David Scheidt
: You mean, they didn't put the spheres together? Gee, why not...
: --
: Howard S Shubs
: "Run in circles, scream and shout!" "I hope you have good backups!"
Way off site, in this case.
anon...@nowhere.you.know
>No such luck: the Washington Beltway carries I-95 on its eastern
>part, and is otherwise known as I-495. Lots of people, however,
>would probably agree that calling it I-666 would be appropriate. <g>
Nah, Caligula left office a couple of months ago . . . :)
hawk, who is aware that Commodus would be a closer fit, but 666 refered to
Caligula . . .
anon...@nowhere.you.know
>Lunacon (Science Fiction convention) is held in
>The Rye Town Hilton, Rye Brook, New York,
>dubbed the "Escher" Hilton by fandom due to the layout of the hotel.
>You can walk from the fourth floor of the Escher Hilton to the seventh
>without going up or down any stairs!
It's been nearly 10 years since I've been in the San Diego courthouse,
but it used to have two fourth floors that didn't connect, depending upon
which end of the building you entered on (which were on separate blocks, with
a larger street between them.
BOth sections had courtrooms. If memory serves, at one point they overlap
. . . .
And the federal court's fifth floor wasn't much better . . .
hawk
doc...@psu.edu
> I've heard of the opposite happening at my alma mater. They found some
>highly radioactive half spheres while preparing to tear down one of the
>older labs. Trying to dispose of them legally would've raised too many
>questions with the DOE, so they ended up un someone else's lab.
While I was at Iowa State (94-99), they discovered a hot spot left
over from the Manhattan project. Almost noone knew that they'd
enriched materials there (and who'da thunk it?--a good reason to
choose the school.)
hawk
Prof. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq. /"\ ASCII ribbon campaign
doc...@psu.edu Smeal 178 (814) 375-4700 \ / against HTML mail
These opinions will not be those of X and postings
Penn State until it pays my retainer. / \
Charlie Gibbs
(Charles Richmond) writes:
>Eric Fischer wrote:
>
>> Howard S Shubs <hsh...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> > How 'bout Interstate 666, spur 6 off of Interstate 66?
>> > I understand they -did- build it.
>>
>> There's US 666 from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT, probably numbered
>> that way to refer to old US 66. I-66, as far as I know, only runs
>> from Washington, DC to western Virginia, so the only existing road
>> that could reasonably be numbered I-666 would be the DC beltway.
>>
>And IMHO the only existing road that *deserves* the designation 666...
Maybe that was the inspiration for that heavy metal song
"Highway to Hell".
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Charlie Gibbs
(Charles Richmond) writes:
>jchausler wrote:
>
>> "Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879" wrote:
>>
>>> And then, there's the coal mine in the basement at Carnegie Mellon
>>> University. I have no idea how far that goes, either into the hill
>>> or down. 80 years ago, it seems that the mining engineering program
>>> there had student's digging the coal for the university power plant.
>>
>> When I was there in the late 60's I always wanted to explore this
>> but IIRC they were storing radioactive materials in it (or maybe
>> just boxes so labeled to scare off inquisitive under grads....)
>
>I read somewhere that when Thomas Edison was a kid, he used to label
>*all* of his chemical bottles as *poison* for the same reason...to
>keep people from messing with them...
Nowadays the standard term is "No user-serviceable parts inside".
Ric Werme
Sort of. It's a UL (Underwriter Labs) requirement dating back to the
changeover from tubes to transistors. These days with surface mount
LSI with extreme pin densities, I have to agree with them!
cjt & trefoil
They could probably delete the "user-" soon.