Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors? 693
Chagatai writes "My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers. Recently I took a trip to see a new computer room that had been built at one of our abbatoirs. While the new environment is nice and sanitary, the old computer room had air intakes that were adjacent to the rendering portion of the plant, and everything smells in an almost unholy way. Management is curious if there are any cleaning agents or means of deodorizing this equipment before moving it into the nice, new office. The only products I could find would clean the outside of the hardware, but the internals would still possess the lovely aroma of boiled dead pig parts. Of course, this is a race against time, as I am sure someone will inevitably squirt Pine-Sol into the system to try to make things better. Does anyone have any recommendations to remove the effluvium of post-mortem porcine matter from our machines?"
One word: Ebay (Score:5, Funny)
One word: Ebay.
Put it all up for auction simultaneously, and watch the fun as people get their newly won purchases. I'd love to read that feedback. "Great PowerEdge, but I've never had computer equipment smell unholy before." And then, watch mass psychology at work as people read each other's feedback from the same vendor and start to put two and two together.
The only thing funnier would be to work at Paypal and hear people squirm as they try to justify asking for a refund. "You gotta believe me, this disk array smells bad. Really bad. Like dead meat bad."
Try... (Score:2, Funny)
Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Bravo.
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, you've got a great (albeit expensive) single-machine solution right there: run the machine in a tub of Fluorinert. Presto, no smell is going to escape that liquid.
Wouldn't work for a data center, unless of course you wanted to run it inside a pool and send your techs in with scuba gear. And at that point, you might as well just run the data center in a normal room - but send the techs in with scuba gear, and they won't smell the funky servers because they'll be wearing scuba gear.
Rendered with Pride (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To suggest this is almost criminally stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmmm...
*scratches chin*
A real render farm (Score:5, Funny)
How about CHANGING the smell? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not indeed.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
But if he hadn't misspelled something, the editors never would have approved his submission.
Do what I do (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever I encounter a system that smells of dead meat I just wipe it & install linux.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. for the humour impared: this is a joke.
Hmmm...would that be Paper Street Soap? (Score:1, Funny)
The smell of a rendering plant will be hard to remove, but this is how I remove the "beef scent" from tallow when I'm making soap.
Tyler Durden? Is that you!!!
Re:A real render farm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do what I do (Score:5, Funny)
"As fresh as a summer ham"
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:4, Funny)
You're also probably going to get a lot of serious suggestions about rubbing alcohol and vapor-based cleaning. These are likely to help, but not do it 100%, and they require either a lot of labor or shipping everything to an expensive cleaning company.
So let me tell you what did where I was working several years back. I was working with the FBI, on a special mission in Russia to help their law enforcement agencies upgrade security in former nuclear weapons facilities. Now, it wouldn't surprise anyone to hear that a certain facility that will remain unnamed, somewhere in the middle of Siberia, only a day or two's drive from a certain site of civil war, had an incident that wasn't properly cleaned up. We arrived at the main computer lab to find a dozen corpses that had been there for a year and a half. And despite the Siberain weather that can freeze spit before it hits the ground, the bodies in the bunker hadn't been frozen.
After getting a couple new gas masks for the guys that really should've skipped lunch before going down there, we discovered that the computers were overrun with, well, you don't want to know. Let's just say it was fuzzy and came in colors I'd never seen before. Even after the room was disinfected nobody could stand to go down there without a mask. Though one of the Russians suggested using it as a gas chamber to execute criminals, until we briefed him on the Geneva Convention. But we couldn't just throw the machines away-they included supercomputers and large clusters full of nuclear weapons research. The science team had to go through all of it with a fine-toothed comb.
So what did we do? Simple-seal everything off! We too a bunch of plastic covers and created an airtight seal around all the computers, with only monitors, keyboards, and mice outside. A ventilation system pumped cold air into the huge computer tent. It was ugly as hell, but worked quite effectively.
So, if your offices don't mind having interior decorating issues, a bunch of strong plastic, industrial glue, and lots of duct tape can solve the problem. Until somebody want to upgrade or do maintenance, of course. God help that poor bastard.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Burn down the building, build a new one (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Donate the hardware to the Iraqi LUG (Score:2, Funny)
I got a better idea.. saudi arabia...
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Clicking links? Please...
Re:To suggest this is almost criminally stupid (Score:2, Funny)
Like, how about not donating them to a country primarily filled with muslims. Pork, ya know.
Re:Hmmm...would that be Paper Street Soap? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, this will be a great article for the trolls. You're sure to see a lot of ridiculous posts here. . . . I was working with the FBI, on a special mission in Russia . . .
LOL. Okay, that was ridiculous. Nice troll - the guy that modded it insightful is probably out waxing his Yugo now.
Let me try. There is no way you're going to rid the equipment of the stench unless you sacrifice a PETA member and cremate the remains in the room with the equipment. The smoky holiness will counteract the "unholy" residue mentioned. It works doubly well if the PETA member is a virgin. The only side-effect is that all subsequent users of the equipment will become politicized vegetarians (well, that and the ashes all over everything).
Re:To suggest this is almost criminally stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
I think we need to swap recipes. I've got some other things you might be interested in.
E-mail me a tylerdurden@aol.com
Hope to hear from you soon.
Re:Donate the hardware to the Iraqi LUG (Score:2, Funny)
My experience. (Score:3, Funny)
Most of the parts ended up well-cleaned and generally stink free. Unfortunately, the power supply was uncleanable without a total dissasembly that would have rendered it unusable, and the while the case appeared clean, once it warmed up it stank just as bad as before; as far as I can tell it was just some weird feature of the paint that kept me from getting the stink out.
Since I couldn't fit an Antec server case in the dishwasher, I wrote it off as a loss, tossed it out, put the parts in a new case, and donated it to my college-student sister.
Re:Febreze!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mythbusters (Score:4, Funny)
Let's not forget, if you bring them to a tightly packed LAN party, no one can tell the difference between the addicted gamers and the PCs that reek of rotting pig parts
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:2, Funny)
Hot damn! My techs smell worse than the gear -- anyone know how long they last underwater? (they're all MCSEs)
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:1, Funny)
Siberia is not Russian and is no where near Siberia fuckwit, nor has it had a civil war
Siberia is Russian, and is in fact very, very close to Siberia.
And by the way, if Siberian geography is the most dubious point you found in the parent post, life is going to give you many problems.
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Double check any advice you get here!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:2, Funny)
Now before you all get mad, I'll explain.
It's just that MCSEs have to have a larger lung capasity to explain around all of Window's problems, ending up blaming the user, whereas the Linux tech will just up and blame the user.
simple as pie!
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Funny)
Therefore, the answer is: (Score:1, Funny)
They'll mask the pig stench within a week.
-J
Re:Removing odiferous organics from computers... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not pigs, but cigarettes (Score:3, Funny)
Probably a good thing.
Re:No, I like where your going with this... (Score:2, Funny)
Instead of just using the pool to clean your data center, you could double it up as a liquid cooling system! Plus, you have a something to do for recreation during breaks. Forget about boring talks at the water cooler, just jump in your data center for a swim!
(Maybe if you use some sorta Jello liquid. I don't think Jello is conductive, and then you could also drink it, which means you could also trash your water cooler, saving your company further money!)
Re:One word: Ebay (Score:5, Funny)
They'd have to be a really good lawyer to get pain and suffering damage from that, but you might have to refund the sales price & shipping both ways and pay the lawyer... unless the judge rules the "DOA" guarantee makes you liable for the death of the buyer on opening the package. =)
Still, it's a fun ad to imagine writing... "Used dual 3.0 Xeon server 8 GB RAM Gigabit ethernet; removed from industrial environment. Works fine. No visible damage. Still, head of our IT department insists this machine stinks, so we're upgrading." (It would help if your IT department head is a Mac enthusiast.)
Make sure to save a copy of the ad for your court date. "But your honor, the machine is exactly as described...." "Exhibit A, your honor, the machine in question." "Dear GOD, get that thing out of my courtroom!"
Re:Hmmm...would that be Paper Street Soap? (Score:4, Funny)
I did receive a fax at work for shipment of just such cargo, I think they just faxed it to the wrong number. But just to freak people out I did print it out and stick it on a coworkers desk with a note that said, "Tonight, we make soap!"
He was more than a little freaked out. But I never received the soap. Or did I...
Tin whiskers, zinc whiskers... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Two Words: DNA Match. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Pigs...MythBusters? was: Not pigs, but cigarett (Score:1, Funny)