Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!

Steve The Cynic · 2012-08-02

Cathoum:
I find it very difficult to believe even a "strong smell of carbon" could mask the odor of cat urine well enough to fool not one, but two people.
Also, did it sit on the dining room table or the desk all weekend?

The whole thing sounds made up.

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...

2012-08-02

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.

2012-08-02

"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."

2012-08-02

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.

2012-08-02

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.

alo · 2012-08-02

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.

2012-08-05

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.

Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!

Featured Comments