The power's out, I can't gamble, blargh!!!

[sms001]

CCt2, any possibility the non-speaker was actually mute? (I know, I know, but hope springs eternal...)

What does happen if I have a hundred bucks in a machine and it powers down? Do I have to sit there until power is restored? Good incentive to feed it in a little at a time I guess.

Well, hang on, what about these?
(Laser Pointer)

Believe it or not, some chickens go nuts for these too. Very close to the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life.

[Mytical]

Slightly off topic, but talking about silence (etc). I worked third shift security from 2000-2002. On holidays the place I guarded was shut down, and I was the ONLY person there. Lights were turned off, and of course no machines running. Talk about a little spooky going through the empty buildings

[raudf]

On the silence of machines... there was nothing more eerie than the arcade just as the gate went down. I'd be outside in the mall and it would be so silent that you'd think you were in a murder movie.

[wolfie]

FWIW, I'm reliably informed that the single creepiest form of silence is...

...when all the engines of a jetliner end up shut down in flight.

Yes, it's pretty rare.

Older aircraft were equipped with fans to cool the pilot - if they stopped turning, he'd start sweating.

Believe it or not, some chickens go nuts for these too. Very close to the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life.

A friend of mine had a dog (dead for a few years now) that would chase after any spot of light. One time, I didn't notice the sun shining off the crystal of my watch, but every time I moved my wrist, the dog would chase after the bright spot.

[smileyeagle1021]

Talk about a little spooky going through the empty buildings

Try a haunted hotel... making it worse, on slow nights we tried to keep all the guests in the same area (and then we'd shut off the breaker for the part of the hotel that wasn't being used to conserve power)... and I'll be damned if when I did security checks there wasn't a peep out of the occupied rooms, not even a TV left on, yet you could hear people talking in the shut down portion of the hotel (people we could never find).

[Aethian]

yet you could hear people talking in the shut down portion of the hotel (people we could never find).

Didn't you post some pictures one time of lights being on that weren't supposed to be on?

[mhkohne]

FWIW, I'm reliably informed that the single creepiest form of silence is...

...when all the engines of a jetliner end up shut down in flight.

Yes, it's pretty rare.

Yep. Look up the Gimli Glider incident. There was some serious uhoh on that one.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Well, hang on, what about these?
[CATTE!]

Our dog, Dooney (RIP), would chase the spot from a flashlight. Haven't tried it on Mocha (our current dog) yet.

It works on raccoons too.

[Mytical]

Try a haunted hotel... making it worse, on slow nights we tried to keep all the guests in the same area (and then we'd shut off the breaker for the part of the hotel that wasn't being used to conserve power)... and I'll be damned if when I did security checks there wasn't a peep out of the occupied rooms, not even a TV left on, yet you could hear people talking in the shut down portion of the hotel (people we could never find).

Nothing like that happened, but I did have a machine make a really loud "CLANG" as I was patrolling. The building was completely empty, but somebody had just shut off the machine and just left. This machine takes awhile to truly shut off. At the end of the shutting off, the 'teeth' (this was a sawmill place, but it was not a saw..I have no idea what the machine did) snap shut tight. So I was walking by it, and "CLANG!" I think I jumped about 3' in the air. Michael Jordon in his hayday couldn't jump as high as I did right then.

[jedimaster91]

Try a haunted hotel... making it worse, on slow nights we tried to keep all the guests in the same area (and then we'd shut off the breaker for the part of the hotel that wasn't being used to conserve power)... and I'll be damned if when I did security checks there wasn't a peep out of the occupied rooms, not even a TV left on, yet you could hear people talking in the shut down portion of the hotel (people we could never find).

Occasionally I cut through one of the closed wings of the hospital I work at. The first thought that always comes to mind is "I'm pretty sure there's a horror movie that starts this way." >.>

[blas]

If there's ever a power outage strong enough to knock out even our backup systems at work, you won't hear dead silence.

You're gonna hear shit falling. And shit breaking.

Why?

Because all of our machinery runs off computers, and electrical power clamps or grippers, whatever you wanna call that holds product in place.

And due to retardery on our manager's end, some stuff that in its users manual says by no means to operate during storms...............we are ordered to anyway, and that's how the last time I was told to keep running machinery during a storm, when a good flicker knocked out the power for a few seconds, everything fell out of its clamps, fell into the machine, breaking internal parts of the machinery.

[Racket_Man]

Occasionally I cut through one of the closed wings of the hospital I work at. The first thought that always comes to mind is "I'm pretty sure there's a horror movie that starts this way." >.>

IF the stories are to be believed that is paritally the case of the story behind the book The Excorist.

The "exorcism" alledgely happened at the OLD Alexian Brothers Hospital in south St. Louis (near wshere I grew up) back in the 1950's. Now back in the early 1980's the hospital was being renovated and torn down and rebuilt. There are stories about the old sections of the hospital (when the new sections were built and integrated with the old until they were replaced) having "strange phemnonia" and unexplained events like lights going out, voices, things moving, strange shapes, etc.

Once the old sections were torn down and replaced things "quieted" down.

[wolfie]

If there's ever a power outage strong enough to knock out even our backup systems at work, you won't hear dead silence.

You're gonna hear shit falling. And shit breaking.

Why?

Because all of our machinery runs off computers, and electrical power clamps or grippers, whatever you wanna call that holds product in place.

Don't know about the jurisdiction where you are, but in Ontario the occupational health and safety legislation includes the right to refuse unsafe work. I'd say a situation which A) goes against the equipment manufacturer's instructions and B) in the past, has resulted in stuff being dropped off cranes, constitutes unsafe work.

Sounds like the grippers are a bad design too, since loss of power can have many causes (not just storms). Instead of an electromagnet holding the load (or holding a clamp closed), they should have a motor drive where the lever of a lift magnet would go (rotates a permanent magnet to turn the external field on or off) or to open/close the jaws of a clamp. That way, if the power went out, the clamp would stay in the same state (open or closed) it was before loss of power. Don't rely on power to hold the load, or to drop it (think of a permanent magnet with an electromagnet "fighting" it to make it let go - power fails after it's put down the load and crane has raised it a couple inches, load flies back up with a crash) - power only used in the act of grabbing or dropping.