Well, that’s another near-death experience narrowly avoided.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone from PC Support just came round to my desk and started fiddling around the back of my PC.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked him what he was doing, and he pointed out that he had been ‘disabling’ the voltage selector on the back of the PC.\u00c2\u00a0 [For the uninitiated, most PCs these days have a voltage selector on the back that allows you to switch (with the aid of a starightened-out paperclip) between 110v (used in the U.S.) and 240v (used just about everywhere else in the World) – it means that the PC manufacturers can make one power supply for all their PCs worldwide.]<\/p>\n
And why was he doing this?\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently some users had (for God only knows what reason) been switching the voltage themselves, and then wondering why their PC didn’t work any more and calling the Helpdesk.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re in Europe (i.e. 240v), and switching it to 110v will blow it up (because the PC is getting twice the power it can handle).\u00c2\u00a0 Who are these idiots, and what on earth were they thinking\u00e2\u20ac\u00bd<\/span> “Hmm, I can’t access my e-mail; maybe if I just change the voltage to the PC…”.<\/p>\n Still, it’s good to see that some Manager has made his mark by identifying this as a major issue, and starting a programme whereby PC Support have to visit every single one of the several thousand PCs within the company and ‘disable’ this capability.\u00c2\u00a0 A valuable initiative, on the back of which his career will no doubt take off exponentially.<\/p>\n But what exactly did the spotty intern from PC Support do to make my workplace a safer place, in the 10 seconds or so he spent ferreting around the\u00c2\u00a0back of my PC?\u00c2\u00a0 I just checked it out – this is too much!\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00c2\u00a0has stuck a sticky label<\/em> over the voltage selector!\u00c2\u00a0 Outstanding!\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not even a printed label stating “Danger! Do not remove!” or “Leave it alone, dickwad!” (which would have been more appropriate), just a plain white one, which will no doubt dry up from the heat of the PC and fall off in a couple of months anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 As safety measures go, it’s right up there with putting a “Caution: Do not aim at face” warning on a shotgun.<\/p>\n I was just musing on how stupid the people who work here must be (1)\u00c2\u00a0to switch the voltage themselves for no good reason, and (2) to be tricked into not<\/span> doing it by a sticky label, when I remembered that about 18 months ago when I moved back to Europe from the U.S., I forgot to flip the voltage selector on my home PC over before I plugged it in, thereby blowing it up.\u00c2\u00a0 But instead of accepting that maybe people here aren’t as stupid as I thought, I’m now concerned that I’m just as stupid as them.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’ve just been here too long (13+ years), but perhaps this really is<\/em> the best place for me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, that’s another near-death experience narrowly avoided.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone from PC Support just came round to my desk and started fiddling around the back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[25,59],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-work","tag-pc","tag-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}