Top Ten PC Blunders

The PC is our pal, right? It is a personal computer after all--our digital comrade, communications center, and CD-burning copyright violator, all rolled into one big package.

But we don't always treat it well. Frankly, we do stupid stuff to our PCs, worthy of a Letterman segment. Stuff so harebrained, so drying-your-poodle-in-the-microwave-oven urban-legend dumb, that we're embarrassed to even mention it. Except that it's all bully good fun--especially when these things happen to somebody else.

These cautionary tales--many contributed by computer pros, IT types, and power users, who definitely want to remain anonymous--will remind you that even computer experts have feet of clay. Consider this the Darwin Awards, PC Division--a tribute to those who killed (or nearly killed) their PCs. And sometimes, almost themselves.

Toner Terror

"Being the macho PC user I am, I was simultaneously installing boards in my computer and changing the toner in my laser printer. But I'm as deft as a hippo, and broke the toner cartridge, spilling the contents into my open PC. I started to vacuum it out when my IT director came by my office and cried, 'Stop! Stop!'

"Toner, you see, is a dry, electrically charged powder. Sucking it into a high-speed vacuum cleaner (with a nice, sparky electric motor) could either ignite the toner or melt it, said the IT guy.

"To be safe, we turned the PC upside down on a newspaper, tapped out the black dust, and used Q-tips to finish the cleaning job. I now only upgrade one thing at a time."

Unbelievable Power Stupidity

"One day, after attaching all the components of my system to a new plugged-in, fully charged uninterruptible power supply (UPS), I booted up and started working. When one of my coworkers stopped by to chat, I said, 'See this spreadsheet that I've been working on for hours and haven't saved? Watch this!'

"With a smug grin, I unplugged the PC from the UPS. Oops. Of course, if I had unplugged the UPS from the wall, the PC would have kept on running. Instead, I spent the next couple of hours rebuilding the spreadsheet and muttering about my own stupidity. Guess who started saving his spreadsheets every ten minutes?"

The Mark of Zzzzzzzorro

"This is a story about my first PC. After spending most of the day trying to print a single page of text--and failing--I gave up and went for a walk. In my haste, I left my coffee cup on the keyboard. When I returned, my PC had printed an entire box of paper with the letter Z. In the process, several parts of my dot-matrix printer had fused from the extreme heat, but the printer kept banging away. I called this episode the Zorro Meltdown.

"The manufacturer said I'd abused the printer and refused to replace it. I had no choice but to kill the printer by driving over it with my truck.

"I traded the PC for a set of bongos at a flea market. The guy called a week later wanting his bongos back. I told him he had the wrong number."

Spreadsheet of Doom

"My pointy-haired boss (who considered himself a tech-head) always got the latest and greatest PC every six months, even though all he ran was a spreadsheet program. In a magnanimous gesture, he gave me his old PC after carefully erasing the hard drive. But being the super-technical guy he was, he'd forgotten about a little tool called Norton Utilities.

"That night, I stayed late at work, and with Norton's help, started un-erasing the hard drive. I stumbled across a spreadsheet file named 'Layoff' that had all the gory details of an upcoming staff purge--a purge the boss had denied would ever happen. When the spreadsheet's contents were accidentally 'leaked' to everyone in the office, the jig was up. The boss was soon promoted up and out of the company."

A Virus Too Far

"My husband is the Webmaster for a large Midwestern university. He was grumbling to his boss about stupid people who launch viruses by stupidly clicking e-mail attachments. 'You've gotta be a real moron to do something like that,' he groused. At that very instant, he pressed a key and accidentally launched a virus that was attached to some spam he received. It took down his machine, the university's Web server, the network, everything. They were mopping up for days."