Post by pinkie on Jul 18, 2014 13:46:53 GMT
I nearly posted this on the "Do you believe in magic" thread, and then thought it deserves one of its own.
I'm not referring to demonic posession of people, sad folk driven crazy by an obsessive need to be right, and be noticed, unaware of their own irrelevance.
No - I am referring to demonic posession of mechanical objects. Specifically I am referring to my boiler.
When I worked for a copier company, we had a couple of favourite signs we used to put up at clients premesis. One was "Please do not feed the computer" based on the number of crumbs and other food debris removed from keyboards. Another was "Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry" - perhaps the best advice an engineer has ever given.
But I have a boiler posessed by the devil. It's last classic posession - 2 Christmases ago, when the hot water failed 3 days before Christmas, and I needed to fit a pump with connectors which arrived on the 24th (it was astonishingly mild that year if you remember, fortunately) but then the hot water failed on Christmas morning, and I had to construct a filler loop and supply to the plate heat exchanger out of flexi plumbing and white push fit joints available from the shed. For all the world it looks like a string of garlic, and the boiler has been fine ever since.
Prior to that it had a string of baffling failures, helped by occaisional composite failures - like burner faults coinciding with wet side faults (had to replace the LDR about 5 years ago - for heavens sake don't tell Dunn and Co they'll be round with a de-con unit, and I'm not quite sure how the burner can work without a photocell
Anyway, after a prolonged good spell, the heating failed to come on this morning for half an hour to heat the towel rails. To shorten the story a lot, it was nothing to do with the boiler, but the redundant defective thermostat came back to life. its only in place just to complete a circuit - we have TRV's in every room, and hasnt worked for at least 5 years, and was obviously left set at 15 degrees. This morning it decided to say "Hi"
Nobody is ever going to convince me these are inanimate objects. They have personalities. And my boiler is a nasty piece of work
I'm not referring to demonic posession of people, sad folk driven crazy by an obsessive need to be right, and be noticed, unaware of their own irrelevance.
No - I am referring to demonic posession of mechanical objects. Specifically I am referring to my boiler.
When I worked for a copier company, we had a couple of favourite signs we used to put up at clients premesis. One was "Please do not feed the computer" based on the number of crumbs and other food debris removed from keyboards. Another was "Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry" - perhaps the best advice an engineer has ever given.
But I have a boiler posessed by the devil. It's last classic posession - 2 Christmases ago, when the hot water failed 3 days before Christmas, and I needed to fit a pump with connectors which arrived on the 24th (it was astonishingly mild that year if you remember, fortunately) but then the hot water failed on Christmas morning, and I had to construct a filler loop and supply to the plate heat exchanger out of flexi plumbing and white push fit joints available from the shed. For all the world it looks like a string of garlic, and the boiler has been fine ever since.
Prior to that it had a string of baffling failures, helped by occaisional composite failures - like burner faults coinciding with wet side faults (had to replace the LDR about 5 years ago - for heavens sake don't tell Dunn and Co they'll be round with a de-con unit, and I'm not quite sure how the burner can work without a photocell
Anyway, after a prolonged good spell, the heating failed to come on this morning for half an hour to heat the towel rails. To shorten the story a lot, it was nothing to do with the boiler, but the redundant defective thermostat came back to life. its only in place just to complete a circuit - we have TRV's in every room, and hasnt worked for at least 5 years, and was obviously left set at 15 degrees. This morning it decided to say "Hi"
Nobody is ever going to convince me these are inanimate objects. They have personalities. And my boiler is a nasty piece of work
