Lonely machine needing company before it would work
I was told this in the bar at a conference, so cannot vouch for its 100% truth....
In the corner of a big machine room were a couple of machines. They moved one (as part of an upgrade) and the other machine stopped working. They moved it back again and the other one continued to work, so they left them both there. They found out a few years later that there was a maze of cables under the raised floor, and one cable was joined to another ( and stretched tightly). When there was no weight on the raised floor the the contact was broken. When there was weight on the the floor tile the cable relaxed 1 mm and the connection was made and the machine worked.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
