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John Kupski received a call from a user recently about a failed laptop. The irate user complained that his laptop was dead, had not worked at home all weekend, and he had no idea what had happened to the unit even though it had stayed put on his dining room table the entire time.
Upon seeing the machine, John immediately noticed that there was significant blackening around the docking connector, and a strong smell of carbon. Opening up the laptop, the "2" key fell to the desk, and there was an unknown viscous substance on the keyboard and LCD panel that had resulted in quite a thick fuzzy build-up.
To John, this was a sure sign of some kind of spill. However, when asked, the user assured, "Nothing spilled at all! Again, it just sat on my desk the entire weekend!" When queried about the material all over the keyboard and screen. After all, how dusty can his desk be? The user simply rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, that's just hair from my cat. He likes to help me on the weekends. I meant to clean that up before you guys picked up my computer."
After bringing the unit back to his bench, John started removing the hard drive, hoping to minimize downtime by inserting it into an identical laptop he had on-hand, but there was something funny. He noticed corrosion on the screws on the base of the unit. This was was, to say the least, extremely weird. After all, there's not much out there that corrodes an anodized screw in a regular office environment.
Removing the battery led to an absolutely awful smell, which had up until this point been masked by the carbon. John couldn't immediately place the scent and, thinking it was potentially some kind of leak, he continued with his work. Once he opened the laptop case, and the hard drive was pulled, he noticed that it showed surface corrosion on it as well along with an almost greasy texture. The hard drive exhibited the same horrible scent as the battery - something acidic and foul. After thinking that the smell was ammonia-like, it dawned on him.
Cat urine.
The user's cat, who apparently enjoyed the warmth the unit radiated, used it as a bed, and, apparently, a litter box too.
In the end, it was an easy decision to scrap the old laptop but not without first advising the user that next time he decides to bring his laptop home to keep his cat as far away as possible.
Re: Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!
2012-08-02 10:35
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Steve The Cynic
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It wouldn't actually be a smell of carbon at all, since carbon doesn't have a meaningful vapour pressure until you get past 3000 kelvin, so there's nothing to smell. At 3400K or so, it's a bit warm for anyone to want to put inside their nose... More likely, it would have been a smell of scorched plastic, and yes, I agree, cat piss would normally smell stronger than that. What I want to know is how the screws got visible quantities of corrosion, even in the presence of the sort of stuff that's normally in urine, in only a weekend... As for the location, I expect that it's either a result of wonky anonymisatio, or the natural evasiveness of idiots who know they've done something stupid and don't want to admit it... |
Re: Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!
2012-08-02 11:42
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yet another name
(unregistered)
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I could have used that cat many years ago. A customer complained their overnight backup was failing. Dialed into box (on a 1200 baud modem, this is how long ago it was) and the log files looked ok, device was present etc. Did a test run, called them and the tape was making the right noises but not writing.
Eventually we had to go and open the system to discover the drive belt for the tape was gone. And what's that smell? and that nest? Yep, the mice got tired of being woken up at 1:30 am every night in their nice warm house, so they took care of that noise. |
Re: Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!
2012-08-02 13:13
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Spewin Coffee
(unregistered)
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"After thinking that the smell was ammonia-like, it dawned on him.
Cat urine." I'm thinking there are a few sentences distinctly and disturbingly missing somewhere around here. "It dawned on him: Cat urine. He immediately got up, ran to the bathroom, vomited, and washed his hand thoroughly. After donning a biohazard suit, proceeded to bag the entire laptop and sterilize the place, disposing of the equipment in the biohazard waste bins that all sensible IT departments have. He then wrote up a report for HR on the employee on maintaining a sanitary work environment including corporate equipment and HR subsequently took the cost of the laptop out of the employee's paycheck as all sensible businesses would. The employee learns their lesson and just shoots the cat." |
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I'm the submitter on this (though I submitted it at least six months ago, so my memory is a bit hazy). To answer some questions:
Yes, this really happened, though things appear to be a bit embellished by whoever posted this. Yes, it was incredibly disgusting, and copious amounts of soap were used on our hands once we figured out exactly what the problem was. No, the smell of cat urine was not recognizable until we had disassembled the laptop. The scorched smell was significantly stronger, though it did smell decidedly weird. It was a Dell Latitude D630. There really was significant corrosion on the screws and other metal parts, though I agree it seems unlikely hat it happened only over the course of a single weekend. Which is even more disgusting, when you think about it. I had a cat once that would piss pretty much everywhere, and would sleep where it pissed, so this didn't strike me as too weird. I hated touching the bastard, because he always stank. TRWTF is that my ex-wife saw no problem with this. Thankfully, she is an EX wife. |
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Back when I worked in hardware testing/repair for satellite tv set-top boxes, we got a batch of failed units that had been in use in the field. One particular unit reeked of cat pee, and even stunk up the lab before we opened the FedEx box. I ended up foregoing our test procedures, opting instead to use a pair of pliers to carry the unit to the dumpster. The bright side of the whole thing was that I got to use the phrase "catastrophic feline urinary saturation" in my report.
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A couple of years ago I bought a ReVoX A720 soaked with cat urine from eBay. It smelled horrible and of course, needed quite a lot of work to get it functional (and fresh) again.
Seller playd dumb and refused to pay anything back. |
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I grew up with cats, and have pretty much always had a cat. While my cats have pretty much always been barf-o-matics, they have not peed/pooped anywhere but their litter boxes. The exception being that if you neglect a litter box enough, the cat will make its displeasure known by pooping next to it or elsewhere.
Whether it's a cat, dog, or child, you need to observe some rules and set some boundaries: If the cat does something that displeases you, you need to immediately discipline the cat, though not with violence. Same as with a child. You get out what you put in: If you always f**k with the cat, tease it, annoy it, etc., it will give you back that attitude. If you treat it as a friend, and with respect, it will treat you with respect. If you treat it solely as a toy for your amusement, don't expect it to care if it displeases you. Cats, like humans, need some attention and affection. If you always neglect the animal and push it away when it's affectionate, expect it to act out, just like your spouse would, or you would if your spouse always pushed you away. On the other hand, if you always lavish it with attention and it can do no wrong, it will feel like it's the head of the household and act like a spoiled sh*t, just as any child with no discipline would. |
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