Idiotic.
So I was in the process of kneeling down in front of a rack to get the dimensions of the button array on an 8 x 8 SDI/AES routing matrix (don't worry, it's Greek to most people) and the lads had left a keyboard-in-a-drawer pulled out and the two little thumbscrews that secure it pulled out farther still and -- I don't know. It came outta nowhere! I was too close. One of the furschlugginger knurled ends of a thumbscrew got caught in my delicate, tiny left nostril and I was off-balance: rriip!
Invoking the name of a Deity while condemning the situation in heartfelt tones, I clutched at my nose and fell gracefully over on my back, just missing the cold, hard steel of the next row of racks. "Help," said I, "unh, help?" Bleeding profusely -- a talent of mine -- I waited for said help and after five minutes of highly-skilled bleeding, help did appear in the form of a concerned member of the Traffic department. I requested some paper toweling.
This arrived in due course, along with responsible authority, who pronounced sentence: "Blood has been spilled. You must go to Occupational Health!"
Ninety minutes, one tetanus shot, three Lidocaine beestings and two stitches later, here I am, telling you. Don't try this at home! Really, don't.
The doc promises there will not be a scar. Better not!
Ouch! You poor thing! I hope it doesn't hurt too much.
ReplyDelete...Not yet...!
ReplyDeleteSorry to be so chatty, but isn't the word "furschlugginger" from MAD Magazine?
ReplyDelete...I am not sayin' nuthin'!
ReplyDeleteNothing shorted?
ReplyDeleteIs this the face that lunched
a thousand chips?
An' toppled th'topless racks of Omneon?*
ReplyDeleteNope. Not even a flicker of failure. But I will never look at a rackmount keyboard/monitor drawer in quite the same way.
Those bedarned thumbscrews have been unscrewed from the device. They're a menace to navigation!
____________________________
* (Our video servers are made by Omneon).
That's cheating! I didn't know about Omneon. "Iled the top-burned mess of towerdom" was where I would have gone, but I wasn't trading on insider information.
ReplyDeleteThe horror of doing a Jenga to the racks hadn't occurred to me. There's a TV ad for a product better left unadvertised, wherein a librarian has a sudden tummyache and topples a whole library. Of course, that schtick belongs over at the Fallacist's, who's already been accused this morning of being a "radical Librarian."
There's a historical reason they call them "thumbscrews."