Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me at all. This seems perfectly in line with “I don’t care what it is, or how well I perform it, as long as I have a job.”
I don't see how that manager expected to have a job by deciding not to cut power to submerged equipment, and have it flushed of the brine and cleaned, ASAP. It looks completely idiotic/incompetent from where I'm sitting.
There are plenty people who never changed a lightbulb in their life, and some of them manage other people.
It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe). I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordin…
You can also just have a spoon in the microwave too, right? I think It's only from things like crinkles in aluminium foil and the prongs of a fork that produce sparks and arcing inside.
My favorite example of conventional ignorance: some guy was traveling on a plane the girl sitting next to him asked him whether there was wifi available so she could browse the internet. This was about 20 years ago... and the guy was convinced that the girl was an idiot. "We were flying in the middle of nowhere, 20000 feet in the air, and this girl is asking me whether we have wifi?? Some people have no common sense!…
It still amazes me, even in a world where I can order starlink. That it works with the other 200 people onboard also using it is incredible.
We should all take a moment to appreciate the internet. Soon (if not already) we'll be in a time where most people take it for granted, but few think about what is actually happening. The internet lets you send a packet of data to any other computer on earth, as long as it is connected to the internet. To get that access yourself you only need to connect to the internet somehow, that's it. So sure there are more difficult cases like planes, about they only have to worry about their own particular problem of the last mile, once the data has reached the internet it can go anywhere. Imagine if the planes also had to make arrangements with BBC, Google, governments etc to get data access. It would never happen.
I've done this with dirty keyboards before, it works pretty well actually!
I would never do it with a toaster :) But curious, how did you dry the keyboard ?
I put it in an oven at low temperature, and then let it dry outside for a day. It did not work so I thought it was broken. And then, a few days later I plugged it in and it worked fine (and still does)
> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted. This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”. World is filled with conventional wisdom th…
Of course I've seen the opposite all the time. People who find issues with the conventional reasoning, and then apply their own _extremely faulty reasoning_ to reach their own conclusion! Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons) Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about…
> so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
That escalated fast.
If he is this reckless with toasters - imagine the dangers he poses to his students!
OTOH
I find few people trustworthy in decision making of any kind.
I'd use de-ionized water and Simple Green (a citrus-based cleaner which evaporates at about the same rate as water), but I'd expect a toaster to survive once dry. I've cleaned several Teletype machines that way. The problem isn't water; it's solids left behind when the water evaporates, and corrosion. Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper…
Oh speaking of. I have this really gunked up Model 35 tape typing unit and was about to dunk it in motor flushing oil. But then I see it has felt pieces and the magnets appear to be coated in shellac. Do you submerse your units completely or do you remove the sensitive parts?
You're absolutely right that they're common in poor countries and that we can't afford more modern and safer alternatives. Not to mention that the more modern alternatives heat the water much more effectively, providing way more comfort.
no, electric showers heat the water much more effectively, providing way more comfort; here in argentina i have to wait 45 seconds or so for the shower to stop running cold because the hot water has to run all the way from the hot-water tank in the kitchen. and i have to cut the shower short after about 20 minutes because i run out of hot water. i had the same two problems when i lived in the usa, though constant-rec…
I had one of these in an outside room as a teenager and in the winter it was terrible:
You can only heat water so much for the available wattage and when it was cold the water was so cold that only a thin trickle could be heated to a comfortable showering temperature.
One of Dave Rat’s old Red Hot Chili Peppers tour videos/blogs has him putting the channel cards from a very expensive analogue Midas sound desk in a dishwasher to fix them after somebody spilt beer over the desk during a gig. Worked great!
Today I learnt that pure water is not conductive and than tap water is a poor conductor at 120V which I believe is the american standard... What about Europe's 230V ? Would he still have gone in the water to unplug the piano if he was in Europe ?
I was immediately reminded of the stern warnings to keep out of flooded basements until you've made sure the electricity to the house is cut off. I found[1] at least one person who died this year because of this lesser-known risk of flash-flooding (the more intuitive concern is drowning because you can't open the door due to water pressure). It's possible that it was more voltage at play, though, there are 400V lines in most German homes (electrical heating and stoves, mostly).