Shark Tank: Myth-conceptions

THIS MINICOMPUTER model's name translates into Chinese as "the
curse," says a software pilot fish who works for the vendor. So when
one Hong Kong customer reports intermittent crashes that seem to be
timed to the phases of the moon, "everybody here fell over laughing
at the Oriental superstitions," fish says. Until it turns out the
Chinese techs are right. The customer's building is right by the bay,
and at the high tides that come with a full moon, water in the
basement is shorting out the building's wiring.

PILOT FISH doesn't take long to figure out why this remote office
can't connect to the corporate wide-area network: A lightning storm
has taken out the router. "What could have caused this?" asks the
site manager? "I tied knots in all the power cords to prevent any
surge from getting through."

INTERMITTENT NETWORK problems are driving this pilot fish nuts.
After months of troubleshooting and $10,000 in replacement hardware,
this remote site still has trouble every time it rains. "One day,
finally, everything starts going haywire while I'm there," he says.
He traces a power problem back to the circuit breaker box - from
which rainwater is pouring. "The roof leaked right into the
electrical panels," fish says. Do you know about this? fish asks
local staff. "Oh, yeah," they say. "We figured when it fried, we'd
get it fixed."

USER'S KEYBOARD isn't working, and when pilot fish checks it out, it
seems heavy. "When I tilted it sideways, enough water and food
particles poured out, you could have made soup," fish says. We must
have had a roof leak after that last big thunderstorm, user suggests.
"On the seventh floor of a 12-story building?" fish asks. Co-workers
finally spill the beans, he says: "A liter bottle of drinking water
was the cause."

OVERHEATING PRIORITIES Air conditioning goes down in a school
district office during a heat wave. But a quick-thinking IT pilot
fish aims a fan at the server to keep it cool, so secretaries can
continue to enter data. That works fine - until a principal walks by.
He touches the fan's motor housing, decides it's getting too hot and
switches it off. Sighs the pilot fish, "The computer immediately
crashes."