Ever witnessed a tech disaster so epic, it felt like a scene from a comedy show? This isn't one of those. This is a cautionary tale of good intentions gone horribly, hilariously wrong – landing squarely in the realm of 'you can't make this stuff up.'
Welcome back to On Call, The Register's Friday column where we revel in your tech support war stories, focusing on the bizarre blunders and ingenious solutions that define the IT trenches. This week, we're diving into a story shared by a reader we'll call "Wilson," who once oversaw a welding shop intrinsically linked to an engineering consultancy.
Wilson sets the stage perfectly: picture the early 1980s, a time when AutoCAD was rapidly replacing traditional drawing boards. This was a pivotal moment in engineering history, but also an era ripe for technological mishaps. "We had a new structural engineer who those of us in the shop quickly identified as an idiot with a degree," Wilson bluntly states. Ouch. But here's where it gets interesting...
One fateful day, this engineer – let's call him "Sparky" for irony's sake – decided that the computers running AutoCAD were in dire need of cleaning. And where better to perform this delicate operation than the welding shop itself? I know, right?
"After opening them up on a steel plate work platform, with high amperage welding being done on the other side of the same table, he took an air hose to blow out the dirt," Wilson recounts. Now, for those unfamiliar with welding shop air, it's not exactly the pristine, filtered stuff you'd use to clean sensitive electronics. And this is the part most people miss: compressed air in a welding environment isn't just air. It's a cocktail of contaminants.
Wilson elaborates: "It's at 90 PSI and is 80 percent air, 15 percent water, and 5 percent oil." Imagine blasting that concoction into the delicate innards of a computer! The result? "When he hit the boxes with this mess, he blew memory chips and any other loose bits completely out of the motherboards." We're talking about a computer massacre here, folks.
But here's the kicker: despite the obvious carnage, Sparky persisted! "He wasn't happy with doing just one PC, he 'cleaned' them all," Wilson laments. "It was great fun watching him try cleaning all the steel grinding dust and dirt off the loose parts after picking them up from the floor, using the fab table and a rag soaked in acetone." You can almost hear the exasperation in Wilson's voice.
The final tally? All five computers subjected to Sparky's "cleaning" ritual were rendered completely useless, necessitating costly replacements. "Lots of work-in-progress engineering files were lost and the senior engineer was ready to kill him," Wilson reveals. A digital dark age descended upon the engineering consultancy, all thanks to one misguided cleaning attempt.
The story doesn't end there. The company, understandably, parted ways with Sparky a couple of months later. His final act of technological terrorism? Deleting AutoCAD from his computer to free up space for a game. Seriously? The audacity! Last Wilson heard, Sparky was employed by a large US-based aircraft company. Let's hope they keep him away from the compressed air.
Now, here's a thought: Was Sparky truly an idiot, or simply ignorant? Could better training or clearer guidelines have prevented this disaster? And more importantly, how many other seemingly harmless tasks are we performing on our tech that are actually ticking time bombs? This incident raises a larger question about the level of technical understanding expected in non-IT roles. It's a reminder that even with the best intentions, a lack of knowledge can lead to catastrophic results. What do you think? Share your own tech disaster stories and opinions in the comments below! Have you seen dilettantes destroy tech? If so, click here – gently – to send On Call an email so we can share your tales of destruction on a future Friday. ®
