Months???
Months?
The man's dreaming! MONTHS?????
I know a machine running still that 10 years back I told them was "a kludge guaranteed up until the moment this conversation ends. If it's still running when I leave the carpark consider yourself lucky. Get the data moved!". And it's still going..
But... That's not the worst...
In the factory we had a hulking great rectifier. Energy levels that would give a dictator wet dreams, and internals that gave electricians wet daymares. Mor'n 20 years before I saw it the original cooling fan sucked it's last bit of dust, and was replaced by an old fan from the roof. The rest of the fans were pulled from the roof and tested, working ones put into storage. Oh, replaced? I mean sat on top of the thing above the old fan. I doubt any of the original internal wiring was left by the time I first saw the thing, and the original circuit diagram was a memory in the head of some poor fellow down the local asylum - the last electrician to try and match the paper with reality.
Despite bypass cable after bypass cable, despite cooling fan failures, despite a build up of dust and - well you can imagine what gets into the air in a metal plant - this thing just kept chugging along. Replacement cost was near the valuation of the business, and it had to be kept running as we needed it going.
For the life of me I cannot fathom how it ever passed an OSH or any electrical safety inspection. No clue how the firm kept some pretty extensive insurance policies in place with this thing in the workshop, and that's not considering it being powered up. I think it was so terrifying that it burned itself out of the memory of those who only saw it on occasion. Perhaps they thought it was a 'joke' or diversion, something not really running but with an old neon indicator light inside to give it it's characteristic operating glow (which, tbh, could've been one such light deep inside - or perhaps an old valve - or perhaps something inside was getting toasty).
In time I kinda grew fond of it. If anything was going to send me home early, this would've been it. My own personal death machine..
It's probably still running somewhere, unhitched and miles from any known power source, all it's wires burnt and salted, no sign of any cooling fan or other moving parts, yet it hums and glows and whirs as if all it's bits were factory-new.
If you hear screams in the night, it's memory has visited my dreams...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
