12 years back there was a CB'er that had a double 3-500 Z amp with 3500
volts on the plate that lived next door to me.

One day he noticed he was running about half power instead of full bore so
he popped the top of the amp and noticed one of the wires on the tube caps
(PLATE) had come unsoldered.....so instead of turning the amp off he melted
the solder a bit with his insulated soldering iron and forced the wire back
into the molten puddle....It worked!.......Then holding a large roll of bare
solder in his hand he added a bit more to the molten solder

It didnt take him long to let go of that roll of solder in his bare hand!!!

His entire hand was burnt white!
"Mike Andrews" wrote in message
...
Bill wrote:
In message , Steve Nosko
writes

SO... He reaches around the end...grabs some line cord and proceeds to
cut
off a piece with scissors...

Blam! ... notched scissors!

On a vaguely similar line my father was rewiring an outside building and
carefully removed all the fuses from the fuse box before cutting out all
the old cabling. He then came across a cable he had forgotten and cut
this too, BANG!! It was the input to the fuse box. One very badly melted
pair of cutters and a rather startled father.

I gotta. I just gotta.

About 25 years back, I was a new systems programmer for a government
agency which I'll cleverly call WeBuildHighways. Our sister shop, the
Department of inHuman Services, was fairly close, and we spent a fair
amount of time visiting and swapping hints and kinks.

One day I was there while some remodeling was being done: an old door
wsa being blocked and a new one cut. I heard a Skilsaw fire up, saw a
blade movingd ownward, and cringed: there was a quad-box about a foot
below the blade and in its path.

My counterpar was a bit quicker, and shouted "Turn Off All Your
Terminals RIGHT _NOW_!!" -- just before the blue flash and the great
dark silence.

This was before PCs, and so we only lost some 3270 terminal sessions
to the mainframe. It was ... interesting.

Another time I'll tell about The Guy Who Blew Himself Through The Door.

--
Mike Andrews

Tired old sysadmin