GrogHeads Forum

IRL (In Real Life) => Enigmas of the Mystical => Topic started by: besilarius on August 04, 2019, 11:06:30 AM

Title: Shocking Event
Post by: besilarius on August 04, 2019, 11:06:30 AM
This will keep the thieves at bay.

http://www.ladbible.com/news/interesting-electrician-wires-1000-volt-charge-to-his-van-doors-to-stop-thieves-20190802

Reminded me of a problem we had on the Manley.  The helo deck was surrounded by antennas that could be lowered.  This made it safe to lower a guy, or a pallet, onto the deck, but the deck apes would chin themselves on the lowered whips.  This made it hard to tune the com gear.
The ETs got tired of telling the boatswains to stop.  One finally put up a sign, "WARNING!  One million Ohms.  Do not touch."

Worked like a charm.
Title: Re: Shocking Event
Post by: JasonPratt on August 04, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
My meterology professor in college (who was a full-blooded Cherokee or Navajo, I forget which), liked to tell a similar story.

He worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (which he liked to call the Unclear Regulatory Industry!), and was in charge of monitoring weather patterns for reactors and testing grounds (among other things), out in the American southwest. So the NRA has a bunch of weather stations set up in various places for this purpose.

One week they get a freakish result on their weather station, out in the desert, of several inches of rain. While that isn't strictly impossible over a short time in the desert on rare occasion, there didn't seem to be any other indicators of such a cloudburst.

The obvious inference was that the sensor was faulty, so my prof was dispatched to go check on it. When he got to the station, he didn't even have to get near it to realize what the problem probably was: some moron had placed the weather station next door to a bar!

Of course when he did get near the station, he confirmed his guess, first by smell and then by sight: some other moron(s) had been peeing in the rain gauge.

He realized after a moment that whoever had put out the station must have been following generated orders from the Unclear Regulatory etc., which they didn't dare try to change, about where exactly (in terms of map coordinates) to place the station; because a sign had been placed nearby asking patrons of the bar not to pee on the rain gauge. Which naturally called attention to the idea of peeing on the rain gauge.

So there wasn't any point putting a sign out: that had already been done, and had basically dared drunks to do it!

Since there was already a sign out, the prof added a "Warning" to it, without specifying exactly what the warning was... and then he ran an all-weather electric fence wire over the top of the gauge, connected to the station's power.

As expected, there was one more anomalous cloudburst at that station, and then nothing like that ever again.  >:D