Priceless

One of my jobs at work today (yes, I do something every once in a while) was to go around to all the computers of a certain make and model, open them up, and check for a known defect told to us by Dell. Seems that for some reason, the motherboard and/or power supply jacks up and the capacitors on the motherboard all start bulging and become a strange burnt brown color. I imagine that maybe the power supply is defective and is sending too much power to the motherboard and frying it. We worked for a long time on a few computers trying to figure out what was wrong with them. You'd imagine maybe ... a burning smell? Or maybe the computer is dead? But no, the computer just decides to shut down randomly once in a while, never at the same time, never doing the same application. We about went crazy trying to figure out what was wrong.

Anyway, back on the story. I went to all these computers, opened them, looked inside, saw nothing was wrong, put them back together, and that was it. One guy in particular, Frank Stec, is quite the humorous individual. This afternoon he was talking to my friend Michael (who is in the same department, desks across from each other), and making up stories about what I might have been doing in there. Maybe I had installed some new IT chip to spy on him -- some listening device so I could listen in on his heinous conversation. He cups his hands around his mouth and whispers at the computer, "Karl .... can you hear me?"

So, I'm in the server room (as always), and Michael IMs me. "come in here and ask frank 'you need something?'" I don't know what this is about, but with such a strange request, I couldn't be bothered to ask questions, and rather jumped out of my chair, ran into their office area (a mere 30 yards away), looked over the cubicle wall and said, "Hey, Frank, did you need something?"

It was a moment to remember. The look of shock on his face was glorious. He stared at me for nearly 5 whole seconds in complete silence. Finally, he swivels his chair around, points, and says, "Michael!?" At this point, everyone in the room busts out laughing, including myself, even though I had no idea what was so funny yet. After that, they tell me the whole story, and it was even better then than when it actually happened.

Good times.