When Shipping the Big Iron...? 489
"When the driver and our receiving personnel opened the trailer door the crate was lying on its side, it was upright when it left the
warehouse. The drive stated that he had hear a loud bang after making a turn and had thought he may have blown a tire.
On the crate there were several shock sensors and tilt sensors only one of which had tripped (the one which was face up when it was on its side). There were also instructions telling us what to do if these sensors had been tripped.
The instructions told us to accept shipment but to inspect for damage and call the carrier if we found any. We did accept shipment but did not open the crate to inspect for damage. We made a note of the situation on the bill of lading with the driver present then contacted our respresentative at Sun for advice.
Our representative is having a replacement shipped to us and the unit which is here now will be picked up and sent back.
I was quite surprised that the crate was not strapped in and tied down tight given how narrow, tall, and heavy this crate was, not to mention the value of its contents.
My question of the Slashdot Community is: What other Big Iron shipping nightmare stories
have you got?"
Nightmare? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nightmare? (Score:2)
dude (Score:5, Funny)
Re:dude (Score:2)
Re:dude (Score:2)
this. [cray.com]
Re:dude (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:dude (Score:3, Interesting)
Certain kinds of problems that are memory bandwidth intensive will run extremely well on computers such as the Cray T3E because that's basically what they were built for. However, you cannot dismiss the shear power of the Cray.
Your example is either a folks tale or mere disinformation. Even if they were OC'd Dell dual P3 Xeons, there's no way a fully equiped T3E wouldn't beat it in every single benchmark. Assuming the application or benchmark was compiled with optimizations for the platform.
The T3E is built in a very seperate, modular fashion. Not all Crays are built the same. There's also many very nice advantages to writing code for a supercomputer:
Message passing in threaded applications is so simple, there's nothing easier. The compiler kicks serious arse. You get native 64bit memory mapping.
Then again, the T3E is old school even at Cray. They've got much cooler stuff coming out right now.
If you've got the mandwidth and a half an hour of time, I suggest you take a look at the Good Shit [cray.com]. [MPEG/400MB]
I think I want one.
Re:dude (Score:3)
Re:dude (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:dude (Score:3, Funny)
Thats common.... (Score:3, Informative)
Get an Art Shipper (Score:3, Interesting)
Many art shippers (especially in the Bay area) have decided to make some extra cash by shipping high end computers.
What they have is climate controlled storage, employees who know how to blanket wrap and strap down somethig valuable, trucks with air ride suspension and they always travel with two or more workers.
The employees don't look upon anything that is shipped as an appliance but assume that it is worth alot and that their job security depends on it being delivered in good shape.
ups (Score:5, Funny)
best advice:
get yourself a bigass u-haul and a troupe of acrobatic midgets. Have them ride in the back of the truck...
when you hit a corner and it starts to tip, the midgets can climb up on each other and hold it in place. problem solved! (warning: make sure your midgets are strong.)
Re:ups (Score:2, Informative)
Never use UPS to ship computer stuff.
Ever [slashdot.org].
Whenever I need to move a computer and I need it done right (i.e. it is my personal box) I do it myself. That means packing it lovingly in the original box with the original styrofoam I have saved, strapping my 0.7 kg CPU fan [thermaltake.com] into place with metal wire and then strapping it securely into the back seat of the car.
When your equpiment matters, trust nobody expect those who truly love and respect it to give it the care and attention it deserves. [Sexual reference not intended.]
Egad, I am sounding like a retirement home advertisement...
Re:ups (Score:3, Funny)
Jeez, would you guys cool it already? My fortune file is big enough as it is!
Re:ups (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ups (Score:3, Funny)
Telex tape drive... (Score:5, Interesting)
When the crate arrived, the driver was so adamant to have the bill of lading signed that we decided to take our time to inspect the crate. We didn't have to inspect for a long time to find a very obvious "little" defect: they simply drove a fork-lift prong through the logic boards...
Needless to say, the driver wasn't very happy not to have our autographs... It was such a masterful job that we oughta asked him for his!!!
Re:Telex tape drive... (Score:5, Interesting)
This beast had to be 10 feet long, four feet deep and another four feet tall, and weighed at *least* a thousand pounds, so much that it was intended to be shipped on it's own built-in casters, then jacked up on pedestal feet, with the caster wheel stored inside against the day when the machine would have to be moved again, probably on it's way to the scrap heap.
The printer moved though shipment, onto the bank's loading dock and into the frieght elevator without incident.
Unfortunatly care was *not* observed that the floor of the freight elevator be close to even with the floor of the 10th floor, when three or four longshoreman-types applied all their muscle to get the thing moving out of the freight elevator car.
When the two caster wheels on the leading end of the printer met the edge of the building floor, they stopped cold. The printer, having much energy stored in it's mass, did not.
The wheels sheared right off, and the printer slid partway out onto the floor, leaving it halfway in and out of the door of the freight elevator, with no wheels underneith it.
Ther it stayed until the next day a plan was hatched: the elevator was placed under manual control and lifted about six inches, the printer was shoved as far as possible back into the car, the car was raised up about a foot above floor level, and an office furniture dolly was places onunder the now wheelless end, the elevator car lowered again to be *exactly* level with (or slightly above) the delivery floor level before attempting to wheel the behemoth offf to the "glass house" wheich was to be it's home.
8' fall? (Score:4, Funny)
That should have been your first warning...
Re: 21st century units (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone else.
Unless you're a scientist. Even in backward coutries like the United States, scientists have long ago switched to metric. As long ago as George Washington [alaska.edu] people knew that metric was the way to go.
Did you know that it took a World War to even settle on a standard value for the inch [ukmetrication.com]? The same article notes that metric was made law in the US before imperial measures were legally defined, and when they finally were, the legal definition of the inch (etc) was defined in metric.
Praise Google, the Bringer of Semi-Useless Factoids.
Not iron exactly ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think the boxes for servers are big, you should see the boxes/crates for sensitive and very expensive biomedical research equipment (NMR's, Mass Spec's, Sequencing equipment, etc).
-Sean
-Sean
i know her little sister (Score:4, Interesting)
They were at least nice enough to give me a Sun 4/490 (1991 take on 5 foot tall 5kw Sun) for free, so i drove home with a truckload of big Sun rack and fussy little sun parts anyway.
I finally did get a sparc center, and only had to drive 400 miles to pick it up. She's named lucy, and she's chewing bytes for a good cause as I write.
Seattle SGI (Score:4, Interesting)
SGI of course, diden't make a big deal about the sales. It doesen't look good on the glossy literature that your servers are being used to stream porn.
I managed to cobble a pretty good Indy system out of crap left in their junk closet when I was told to help myself. MB were tossed in with power supplies and sead SCSI drives. Most of the stuff still worked, even the MB traces were protected with a think gooey film.
In short, the make good stuff, so in hindsight, delivery by Honda wasen't such a dumb idea.
Re:Seattle SGI (Score:3, Funny)
thick gooey film ? Yo that wasn't protection that was the lack of protection! Hope you washed your hands.
This story is obviously fake... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Seattle SGI (Score:2)
I don't mean to be rude, but either you're exaggerating like crazy or you don't know what you're talking about. I used to work on $800,000 worth of SGI equipment (more or less), and the only import it could be hauled in was a 15' truck. It was about four racks, each of 'em six feet tall, absolutely filled with gear.
If you own a Land Rover or a Hummer or something else big, and you try really hard, you might be able to spend $500,000 on SGI systems to fill it. But that's paying list price for everything and buying lots and lots of SGI RAM.
If you were just exaggerating to be funny, then never mind.
Although you are right on about the pornography thing, though. There was a while there in the mid 90s when SGI Challenge servers served up an awful lot of porn, judging by the data centers I used to work in.
Re:Seattle SGI (Score:2)
Jest a bit of exageration I'll admit - but be aware that SGI systems used for visualisation can quickly add up when you start adding graphics hardware. Plus - back then, SGI owned Cray and $800,000 worth of Cray parts could fit in the glove box.
Plus - don't forget the licencing fees for the C compiler. Oh... and the media kit.
Re:Seattle SGI (Score:2, Funny)
VAX (Score:5, Interesting)
Come monday morning, it had rained hard the entire shipment was soaked. The plastic wrapping around the boxes weren't tight enough to keep the water out - the manuals were so soggy they could have been wrung through. In the end we didn't accept the shipment, and returned the pallets, and got a replacement from Digital.
Contrast this when, once, we ordered a serial cable. The cable came in a three-foot by three foot shrinkwrapped and taped box, filled almost completely filled with that shock absorbing stuff - and a coiled cable (in its own sealed bag), rattling aroung in a corner of the box.
/Janne
Re:VAX (Score:4, Funny)
Re:VAX (Score:5, Funny)
Way back when I had ordered a replacement 2.1g SCSI HD to replace one in my SPARC 10 that had failed.
Anyway, one day a BIG box showed up (big compared to the size of a 2.1g disk, anyway). ever see the boxes they used to ship VMEbus boards in?
Anywho, inside that box was.... get this.... a 0.5amp slow-blow fuse!
An eentsy-weentsy fuse in that HUGE VMEbus box!
My personal favorite though is Sun part # 414-1100-01. Every time we get a new sales rep on our account, we make them try to quote us a dozen of them for purchase.
The 414-1100-01 is a 2x4. You know, a block of wood. It's part of the shipping crate that Exx00 equipment shows up in. Each and every piece of wood and foam in that thing has a part number.
Our poor sales reps.... the part # isn't listed on _any_ sales sheets... they go _crazy_ trying to figure it out!
Re:VAX (Score:2)
Contrast this when, once, we ordered a serial cable. The cable came in a three-foot by three foot shrinkwrapped and taped box, filled almost completely filled with that shock absorbing stuff - and a coiled cable (in its own sealed bag), rattling aroung in a corner of the box.
Yup. Just last week I ordered the following items from MacMall: ethernet switch, big stack of CDRs, Zip drive, USB keychain drive, some cables and stuff, and exactly one felt-tip pen for writing on said CDRs.
The order came in two shipments from two warehouses. Guess what came all by itself in a roughly 1x1x2' box, swaddled with kraft paper: the frickin' PEN!
They should've just refunded my $1 or whatever it was and written me a note: no fuckin' way we're sending you one fuckin' llitle pen in a big fuckin' box. Use a damn Sharpie.
Just checked, this is not April 1 (Score:4, Funny)
May I suggest some other future "slow news day" stories:
Re:Just checked, this is not April 1 (Score:3, Funny)
Dammit, next time warn us before posting these kind of spoilers!
(Yes, I know this is offtopic; Nazi moderators please keep your panties on).
Gotta break up the Slashdot monotony (Score:5, Funny)
1. YAMB - Yet Another Microsoft Bug (tm)
2. Why Micro$oft is bad, and how Bill Gates ruined Christmas
3. Cletus runs Linux in his double-wide, the 50 page expose'
4. Judge Dredd hears yet more testimony in the M$ trial, after 4 years, we still care
5. KDE integrates Konquerer into the O/S, 1000's cheer.
6. Microsoft adds a font to Winblows 3000, Adobe sues for monopoly "tying" feature to OS
7. Netscape (who?) releases MooZilla 3.0 RC6 beta 7.0a, 0.0000005% of websurfers everywhere rush to download.
8. Larry Elison comes up with another dumb idea, this one will work! (NetPC, Unbreakable Orikle)
9. Apple releases new Mac that only schools can buy, and why you should give a rat's ass.
10. New replacement penis runs Linux, with BlueTooth it will talk to your watch. Never be late for an erection again!
I wish Slashdot editors would post more porn. My fingers are getting numb scrolling over crap like the above on the front page.
They call it PMS because MadCow Disease was already taken.
How to pack a SnowMobile engine (Score:2, Funny)
Cali to Texas Full Service (Score:5, Interesting)
It was supposed to be shipped from California to Texas by a specialized carrier. This guys have trucks with some serious shock absorbtion, and the insurance to deal with quarter-million dollar equipment. It was full-service, too. Our computer room was up the loading dock, through a couple departments and low doorways, and up a ramp (raised flooring) through another low doorway. They were supposed to use the mechanized tilting/lifting pallet jacks, get the crate all the way into our computer room, get the rack off the pallet, and roll it into place.
The day before it was scheduled to arrive (at least one good thing), we have a large delivery van (normal crappy suspension) show up at our docks with something addressed to us. We get out there, look at the bill of lading, and sure enough, it's our rack of equipment.
It was just one guy--the driver.
And he doesn't do full service. He only had permission on the bill of lading to drop the package on the docks, and that was it. No mention of full service, and this company didnt' do it anyway.
It turned out it was shipped by air freight instead of truck, then dropped off (via normal van) to a local shipping company, with instructions for them to drop it off to us.
What a load of shit.
We finally ended up with a couple HP reps (only called out to certify our cluster; not move hardware) coming out to help us out. We lucked out that the rack was *just barely* able to fit under our doorways. So, these two HP reps grabbed a bunch of plywood and crap, stripped the crate, got the rack off the crate by quickly rolling it down the plywood (a hair-raising experience), and rolled it to the computer room.
Fortunately, we had a portable ramp built to go up the steps. It took 8 of us to get the rack up the ramp though, but we finally got it into place.
I still have no idea what became of the billing issues with the shipment; no idea if were charged for the full-service shipping, or what.
Classic story from a friend of mine (Score:5, Funny)
So, there were a multitude of servers, network gear, cables, etc. that all were shipped to the location. Most of it made it there okay. But a rather key piece - a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar Cisco 7513 that was to serve as the core router for the whole infrastructure, never made it to its destination. The shipping company sort of shrugged and apologized, but that still left the problem of how to get a new 7513 to the location in time.
Cisco was very helpful - promptly delivering a new 7513 on rush, but it was delivered to the ISPs offices. They opted not to trust it to the vagaries of shipping, and instead put someone on a plane, and checked the crated router as "critical cargo", supposedly the highest level of service an airline will give.
Well, they lost it.
It got put on a cargo plane to somewhere remote, and wouldn't be back for days. The people at the ISP were frantic. They needed a router RIGHT NOW, something they could get over there, and they needed some transport mechanism that would be foolproof.
So, they pulled a standby 7513 out of production, scraped together the needed linecards, put it on a handtruck, and drove it to the airport. Once there, they bought the escorting engineer two plane tickets - one for the engineer.........and one for the router. Of course, a 7513 is too big for coach seats, so they put the both of them right next to each other......in first-class.
History does not record whether the router had the chicken or the fish.
But, the router made it there, probably having enjoyed the in-flight movies and complimentary steamed towels, and cheerfully fulfilled its duty , pushing packets to and fro.
And then it was shipped back UPS ground, probably dreaming of its taste of the high life.
Matt
Re:Classic story from a friend of mine (Score:3, Insightful)
Why on earth would they do that? Why not just ship the minimum required for onsite production, and then zap the data back to the main office for onward distribution? I've never heard of anything like this. It makes no sense.
not Big computers but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Saving cash (Score:5, Informative)
federal trucking law (U.S.) requires any object by itself be strapped in or held in by loadbars. multiple objects must be held by straps or loadbars every eight feet of linear (front to back) truck space.
often this is ignored because the company (stupidly) believes that:
a: their drivers are careful and won't drive like mario andrete on the turns
b: a heavy object will not move when the driver turns or stops suddenly.
c: who knows.
i've seen many times where a company will save money by only equiping a 53foot trailer with only 6 loadbars (the average compliment is around 28) and only a few straps. for the companies this works well probably 80percent of the time but i'd imagine that the money they save is more than taken in the other 20percent of the incidents.
my favorite stupid shipper was the one that didn't attempt to restrain 4 crates of 1/2ton rated chain motors (these crates are on wheels). each crate contains two motors and it's associated chains and such. on average each crate will weigh in at a hefty 600lbs. when a truck accelerates briskly, and the crates aren't restrained the have a tendancy to move to the back of the truck. these particular crates had 18feet of runaway and ended up crashing through the truck's cargo doors and rolling several hundered feet down the highway. no injuries to the crates or motors but several hundred to the truck, lots of fines and several motorists scared shitless!! 8^)
insist the company restrain your items!!! watch them if you have to. restraining gear is very simple, if it doesn't look right to a layman, chances are it isn't.
cheers,
eric
---
eric maultsby
sound engineer / designer
inconceivable productions
Tape machine instructions not detailed enough (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tape machine instructions not detailed enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess this is a little off-topic, but the topic is lame anyway so who cares?
My all-time favorite warning label can be seen on the inside of Ampex DST 812 tape libraries. (Maybe others in that series, too, but mine was a DST 812.)
These things are pretty big-- about eight feet across and four feet deep, with a pair of large doors on the back for access to the tape robotics.
This is a little tough to describe, but try to picture it. The tape drives are in a stack on the left side of the library (viewed from the front). The middle of the library is tape storage, and the right is power supplies and robotics and stuff. There is a big beam that runs down the center of the library, and the robot arm moves left and right along that beam. The arm itself is a big piece of steel with the manipulator and optics mounted on it.
This library has some serious motors in it. When the robot arm needs to go from the left extreme to the right extreme-- a distance of about six feet, I guess-- it makes the trip in about a tenth of a second. Whoom! So fast the whole 2,500 pound chassis shakes a little from absorbing the momentum of the arm when it stops.
Obviously, you're only supposed to have the access doors open when the power is off. There are lots of circuit switches built into the doors to ensure that the power gets cut if the doors are opened. Nevertheless, there's a warning label.
The label, bright yellow, depicts one of those stick-figure people all labels have. He's leaning forward with his head in the back of the machine. The robot arm is coming at him, and the red lightning bolts coming from the place where the arm meets his black-dot head indicate impact, agony, and grievous injury.
All in all, it's pretty darned explicit for a warning label.
Re:Tape machine instructions not detailed enough (Score:2)
I just saw a graphic on a Budget moving van that suprised me: it's labeled 'how to lift correctly', or something similar. The first drawing (with the word "correct" under it) is of a stick figure holding a box at chest-level, knees slightly bent, and standing up straight. The second drawing (with the word "wrong" under it) is of a stick figure lying on the ground with the box on top, crushing the stick figure.
Just saw that two days ago, but had never noticed it before.
Re:Tape machine instructions not detailed enough (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, this made us boring-gel-cleaners and shaft-connecter-thread-re-greasers somewhat nervous about running in there to clean goopy bore gel and grease up a new drilling shaft. But we were comforted by the vodka the operator liked to put in his iced tea, knowing that if we did get sucked in, we'd probably die quickly because he'd never think to turn off the rotor.
Shipping stories w/Sun (Score:3, Informative)
SGI Origin 2400 nearly bought the bullet (Score:2, Funny)
Intra-Company Shipping (Score:5, Funny)
Kintanon
FedEx (Score:2, Interesting)
Several weeks later he emailed me and wanted to know where his package was. (Delivery only should have taken 2 or 3 days). I looked up the tracking number and found that it had gone from Los Angeles, to Phoenix, from Phoenix, to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles, to Phoenix... etc. for a total of 4 round trips!
FedEx had no clue what the problem was, but eventually it ended up at its destination 21 days after I shipped it.
Sun Service Stories (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my favorites was a pair of A5000 disk arrays that were delivered in pristine boxes, but when you opened the boxes, the brackets they were bolted into were bent 4 inches over, at a 90 degree angle. Think straight (but misaligned), bent 90 degrees right for 4 inches, bent 90 degrees left and there following the edge of the array.
It was obvious these arrays had been 1) mishandled and 2) repackaged. This wasn't something you could do by accidentally dropping the arrays either; both edges of the bracket had the same bend. It was like they had hit it really hard with a forklift or something, wrapping the bracket across the front of the array, and then said "oh no" and boxed them back up again.
We told the customer to work with our shipping dept and the shipper to resolve the responsibility, and I never heard about it again, so I presume they got satisfaction from someone.
Lost in Transit (Score:5, Funny)
EMC Showed us Pictures ... (Score:4, Funny)
Two guys with the truck got the Clarion onto the the truck, but DIDN'T LOCK THE WHEELS. The truck was on a slight incline. Out rolled the Clarion, over the edge of the lift, tipped top first. The pictures show the Clarion trapped, between the lift and the asphault of the parking lot at about a 30 degree angle.
I bet A) Someone lost their job for this. B) Some sales manager at EMC was delighted. C) That some insurance company is very unhappy.
Not exactly big iron but... (Score:2)
2nd hand story from IBM Rochester (Score:4, Interesting)
Dead Hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course there was no documentation, weird non-standard obsolete hardware, and precious little filespace left (everything that wasn't absolutely crucial to closing the books was deleted to make room.)
Then the damn thing dies for lack of disk space. After Christmas. Before New Years. And there I am stuck with the Accounting folks positively freaking (SEC requirements or something.) Luckly I do recall having seen some old scrap parts for what was apparently from another site's old install of this POS stuffed away in the back of a storage room at HQ.
So I get our hapless Admin Asst. to go in the storage room with a Polaroid and take a few pictures, have her fax those to me, and then extricate what I want her to send me. So she does - ships it overnight top priority. And it doesn't arrive. We do it again. Again goes who knows where. Everything is filled out right, shipper's just have no clue where it is.
OK, last chance. Nobody is in the office but I get through to Security who gets through to the AA who is home while the hubby and kids are off at the movies. Explain our plight, give her directions, and make many promises.
An hour later she's left a note on the kitchen table and is on her way to the airport with the last of the damn hardware packed in her bag, wrapped in a trash bag and padded with a few old blankets. That afternoon they flew cross-country 1st class and had a limo meet them and bring them to my site.
Her husband and kids came home, find the note, follow the directions and were treated to 3 days of resturaunts and a suite at a nearby hotel with unlimited room service. The AA stayed at a luxery spa out where she was on their best plan and got every wrap, scrub & rub on the menu. Plus lots of good champagne on tab for New Years.
I billed it all to hardware support and told the Accounting folks if they didn't like it I'd unplug the damn thing & go home myself. Never heard a peep except after it was all done my boss's boss wanted the weird drive for her desk as a reminder why systems should be standard and retired in a timely manner.
Codicil: Later they hired me for some more work and never blinked an eye when I told them my rates doubled for them, it was worth it to be sure the stuff got DONE.
Beware the forklift (Score:4, Interesting)
A company I used to work for dealt with financial equipment. Heavy iron like Unisys A's, V's, the infamous NIE sorters, and the star of our story : the S4000 proof machine.
This particular S4 had a big 10 pocket (IIRC) module and a microfilmer on it. That makes it around 12+ feet long, waist high, and about 3 feet deep. These things are true big iron, as they have a heavy steel frame, huge power supplies, etc. I think they weigh in at around a ton or so. Enough weight that the warehouse schmucks can't just toss em around like sparc stations (ahhh another story for another time ...) Anyway, these things are crated up for shipping by truck. They usually ship really well. Again I suspect this is do the size/weight garnering some respect.
So, this machine shows up at our door with a little hole in the end of the crate. About a 6 in long crack. The shipping/receiving guy notes it on the BOL, and signs for it. Later that day we find out that the hole was from a fork lift fork. The operator has shoved the fork all the way through the machine END WISE! Through around 6 heavy gauge steel panels, structular tubing, big cap banks, all the assorted mechanics in the unit, etc. Hard to imagine this being an accident, ya know?
Machine was scrapped out. I think it took around 8 months to get any money out of the shipper.
Re:Beware the forklift (Score:2)
who needs AC (Score:3, Interesting)
Couple minor problems. We had already burned up one ultra because we didn't have a dedicated AC, and the building didn't provide AC at night or over the weekend. At the time, we were using $15 fans strapped in the doorways to the "server room" to keep it below 100F.
During the big argument with the CFO's girlfriend (the office manager) about why we needed to have AC put in before we turned on the big box (it needs a 440 power hookup) one of the junior sys admins had unpacked all of the Kingston memory, and left it laying out on a table near where the painters were finishing up.
Oddly enough, we found the boxes for the memory in the phone closet, but the memory was never seen again.
By the time the AC was ready, we had run out the "trial" period from Sun, and when they wanted to get paid, we ended up sending the box back telling them that it didn't mean our current needs.
Anyone care to guess what 4 gig of RAM cost back in 1997?
okay. (Score:2)
May cost you as much as the server, but it won't be hurt
The overuse of "nightmare" (Score:2, Redundant)
Vibration testing at the plant.. (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't be quick to blame Sun for any sort of manufacturing defects. Every single one of the major players in the industry performs extensive environmental testing on their gear -- This includes vibration testing.
I should know, i've worked in just such a place (at IBM, however) on and off for the past few years. You'de be surprised how much test engineering goes into something simple like a singular hard disk, let alone the entire enclosure and cabinet. Where I worked, we even had a room lined with foam sound-dampening cones, with a large turntable in the center. Machines would be routinely brought in, and their noise characteristics studied to see if anything would harmonically wiggle loose after nearly a decade of simulated abuse. Everything from 2-inch-wide mounting brackets to entire cabinets filled with gear.
Cheers,
Not big iron, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
When the server arrived, the box was waterlogged and when they pulled the server out, water actually poured out of the case. Apparently UPS had left it out in the rain at some point.
Fortunately, it was insured, so our client got a replacement from Dell quickly.
The funny thing is that after a few days of leaving the machine out to dry, they actually tried to plug it in. Booted up just fine. I wouldn't bet on its long term reliability, but I thought that was cool.
Re:Not big iron, but... (Score:2)
That server should be just fine, since they waited until it was quite dry to turn it back on. I'd certainly take it apart and inspect it thoroughly for corrosion, but the water really isn't usually a problem, as long as there is no electricity involved until after it's dried. Saltwater complicates things a bit, but if it's just rainwater I really doubt any damage was done.
Re:Not big iron, but... (Score:2)
Took it home, took everything apart, cleared out the snow and wiped the worst of the moisture off... wait a few hours until it dried completely. Put it back together, boot up... everything worked great. Promptly got Linux installed on it, and it's currently one of my file servers.
Re:Not big iron, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
So one day he asked how did they clean all the nitty-gritty details (that was 23 years ago, before digital scopes; then scopes were basically nothing but rat nests of wiring).
The Tektronix guy simply said that first, they dip it in soapy water, slosh it a bit, then rinse it in clean (demineralized) water, slosh it a bit again, then put them in the oven for three days at 75.
The day I helped unload an IBM Linux cluster (Score:2, Informative)
That's when we noticed that our company had placed IBM's pallet on top of one our pallets!!
The skids that IBM had shipped (two cut pieces of wood, not the greatest) were not even close to being able to fit that height. The skids would not sit at a level where we could roll it off.
We looked around for anything to help, and eventually butchered another crate for it's door and tried to use that as a ramp. We got another big guy to help try to roll it down without having it tip over and kill us.
Half way down the wooden ramp splintered and the weight of the rack brought it to ground. Luckily it was only a 6 inch drop at that point so nothing bad happened to it.
Moral of the story: Think before digging into a rack system like you are a kid at Christmas, and make sure that there isn't an extra layer of pallets in the way.
Powermac 7200 (Score:2)
buster.cps.msu.edu (Score:2)
Or so they say...
Definition of a nightmare. (Score:4, Insightful)
Due to improper shipping, there's a "possibility" of shock damage.
The shipper is happy to cooperate with you on marking the shipment as damaged.
The company agrees to send you a replacement and pick up the "potentially damaged" merchandise.
Hope you didn't lose TOO much sleep over it.
-Restil
E6500 and building security... (Score:2)
The 6500 shipping crate sounds similar to the 4800 crate you had issues with, but the problems we had were with trying to get the danged thing into the building. (The R*ss building in the financial district.)
The truck pulled up on delivery day, and the building management wouldn't let us in the door fearing that the server+pallet jack would ruin the parquet floor of the lobby.
Their plan was to have us bring the server in through the street level elevators. The problem? To get to the street level access was a seven inch jump up the curb, followed by a four inch drop onto the elevator platform. It gets worse... The street level elevator really only granted you access to the *tunnels* which allow access to the loading docks/freight elevator. At one point, the tunnel descends at a 30 degree angle.
They finally compromised, after 2 weeks, and allowed us across the lobby. Of course, we had to go and purchase carpeting and plywood to protect the floor.
I could understand that if the 6500 was really heavy, say over 1000 pounds. But at 700 pounds, I really doubt there would have been much effect on the lobby floor. Heck, high heels put more stress on the floor.
it's not just big iron (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a company that sells coin-operated arcade games. You know : the large 400lb (or bigger) monsters we all endlessly feed quarters into.
on a rather frequent basis, we accept shipments that are visibly damaged, on the same contingency you noted : received with damage, contact the shipper for instructions. On a few cases, we have had these LARGE, extremely well built, games destroyed by improper shipping.
It's quite amazing when you see something constructed from 3/4" or 1" plywood utterly smashed flat.
On the other hand, I have a couple of very nice PIII linux servers humming away here. They used to be CPUs running "Hydrothunder" boat race games.
:-)
- JD
Recording consoles (Score:2)
I worked at a fairly large NY City recording studio and we had ordered a brand spanking new 56-frame recording console ($810,000) from one of the only two large frame British console makers that matter.
I don't recall if the thing came by plane or boat, but when we got it, it came on four not quite fully loaded pallets (they didn't stack the stuff very high).
The shipping guys gingerly removed the skids from the truck at the studio and into the room where it would eventually live.
The next day two engineers from England arrived to put the beast together and test every component on every channel so that the console was 100% when they left for home.
Once it was assembled, EVERYTHING WORKED and required no addition maintainance due to the long journey.
I told you I was going to bore you.
Rich...
Server falls over and crashes... (Score:3, Funny)
Came into work early one Monday morning, and on my way through the IT area noticed the new blade server had fallen over and crashed. Literally.
The six-foot cabinet was lying at an angle of about 45 degrees, propped up by three or four blade drawers that were fully extended on their guiderails.
This multikilobuck piece of super-hi-tech kit did not have the sort of anti-tipping mechanism el-cheapo filing cabinets have had for a century or more -- some method of preventing a user from extending more than one blade at a time. Somehow, somebody (maybe one of the cleaning staff -- we never did find out who) had pulled enough blade drawers out that the entire case had overbalanced and tipped forward.
Later the guys installing it found the manufacturer's solution to this problem in the packaging -- a large pressed-steel duckfoot meant to be bolted onto the front of the case. Hi-tech my fundament.
two i've seen. (Score:2)
The other time, a bunch of boards for a telemetry system. All had the "anti-static" warning label. The person who received then for the company painstakingly went though every bag and pulled the board out--maybe 15 boards total--carefully wrote down the serial numbers, and then stacked/layered them in a box of styrofoam peanuts!! All boards destroyed.
My own tale of woe (Score:2)
It wasn't computer big iron, but my employer had a somewhat similar problem with a piece of scientific equipment- a mass spectrometer. The mass spec weighed close to a ton and was not properly secured in the truck while shipping. It didn't tip over, but actually burst through the end of the shipping crate and was about a third out of the crate on delivery. For some reason, our people decided to sign for it, but with the notation about its condition on receipt. This was a mistake.
The shipping company claims that it was signed for and thus isn't their responsibility, probably because they decided to insure the shipment by weight, so it wound up being insured for about 1/1000 of its value. We were eventually shipped a replacement, but the original is still sitting in our warehouse. It's almost 3 years later, and our lawyers, the manufacturer's lawyers, the shipping company's lawyers, and the insurance company's lawyers are still fighting about what's going to happen to the thing.
Always inspect before signing (Score:3, Informative)
For those of you not familiar with the accelar line of switches, it's an enterprise-level network switch, intended to be the backbone of a corporate LAN. It's about 24 inches high by 24 inches wide by however deep your average switch is. I'm no network guru, so I can't give all the details, but from what I do know, the Accelars can co everything short of make your coffee in the morning, depending on how they are configured. The cost of this switch? $70 grand.
We handled this switch the way we handled all the other major Seattle hardware: Have it shipped to our Boston HQ, where the IT dept. would configure the hardware ahead of time, box it back up in its original packaging, and FedEx it to Seattle. We did this with a few PowerEdge servers, laptops, and other lesser switches. They all got there without incident. I wish the same could be said for the Accelar.
Here's the interesting (and informative) part of the story that everyone involved in shipping should take note of: When the Accelar arrived, nobody from the Boston office was in Seattle yet. The folks in Seattle, while technically competent, didn't realize the value of what they were receiving.
When the Accelar arrived, the box was obviously very beat up. All of the styrofoam was crumbled into little pieces, and was sitting at the bottom of the box. The Accelar was actually sitting on top of the styrofoam! The box was very shoddily taped together. We later guessed that the Accelar fell out of the box, and was thrown back in in a hurry.
The FedEx driver was in a serious hurry (for obvious reasons), and assured the receivers that if there was any damage, that FedEx would take care of it. The folks in Seattle signed for the package without really inspecting it, and the driver was on his way.
This is the big mistake. When you sign that little piece of paper, you acknowledge that the product arrived, and was, to the best of your knowledge, in good working order.
After we arrived in Seattle and saw the damage, we immediately put in a claim with FedEx. After about 2 months of arguing back and forth, FedEx refused to honor the claim, and we were stuck holding a beat up Accelar.
Luckily, even though the switch looked like absolute hell, it worked without any problems. But if there were any problems, we would have been screwed. Most hardware warranties don't cover physical damage, so we would have been stuck with a 70 thousand dollar paperweight in Seattle.
So, here's today's lesson: Never sign if there is a problem. Screw the driver - his other deliveries can wait. If there appears to be some kind of damage, contact the shipper before you accept it. Don't trust yout package insurance to cover the cost of the item, either, because the shipper almost always contests the insurance claim, and if you've signed the harwdware away, there's little you can do about it.
Use a good shipper (Score:2, Interesting)
Why? Because they strapped in everything. Heck, when we were done delivering, they would strap in anything left over so it wouldn't just fly around the truck.
Some drivers were better than other, but overall, we had no shipping issues.
My best advice is to use an electronic logistics company to move your equipment. They may cost more, but when you receive damaged equipment, the lost time will more than likely pay for the difference.
Moving A PDP10 (Score:2, Interesting)
Bruce Kennard was called, as one of the last remaining dealers in legacy DEC systems in the bay area, and given an opportunity to save the machines from the smelter who wanted them. The catch was: All the PDP10s and a boatload of SA10s (PDP10 IOBus to IBM Channel Adapaters) and an even LARGER boatload of Memorex Washing-machine disks had to go too (If I recall correctly, there were 145 of these, some of which were side-by-side double-spindle units). And we had 48 hours to do it. Bruce could beat the smetlers price, but couldn't assemble a crew to move the equipment before the deadline. I had a crew, but couldn't raise the money. A deal was struck: I'd move all the equipment out of BT's space down to Bruce's warehouse a couple of miles away, in exchange Eric Smith & I would get to keep one of the complete KL10s.
On the day of the move, I show up with a 17-foot box van, and four guys, and we begin filling the truck with 200ish pound each disk drives, fifteen at a time. At BT, we were loading from a dock-height ramp, but at Bruce's warehouse, we had to unload with a forklift, so each round trip took close to 45 minutes.
Now these disks were being knocked apart for breakage - nobody wanted Channel-attached 300ish megabyte washing machines any more, so we weren't being particularly careful with them, i.e. no tie-downs or anything in the truck.
We had made seven or eight trips, and things were moving pretty smoothly.I was passenging, and a friend was driving. Then, a car passes us blowing his horn and flashing his lights. I get this horrible sick sensation -- I immediately know what has happend. We pull over, and where there HAD been fifteen disks, were now 6. So, we double back, and in an otherwise busy intersection were 9 of these beasts in various levels of decomposition. I thank deity that none of them fell onto another motorist. With just the two of us, and a team of Fremont City Cops heckling (but not helping) we get the drives wrestled back into the truck, and down to Bruce's warehouse.
The LAST load of the night is taking the PDP10 to my house. For those who have never seen a KL10, it is an enormous beast. Two 23-inch racks and one 19-inch rack, all bolted together, with dozens of cables running back and forth (i.e. the PDP11s unibus runs from the front-end processor in the right-most rack, all the way to the IO cabinet in the left-most rack, and all the way back to the right-most rack to pick up the TU56es). So, seperating the cabinets is a MAJOR chore that I was unwilling to take so late in the day.
In the bottom of the center rack is the 13 kilowatt power supply for the ECL cage. The whole thing is VERY heavy - at least 1000 pounds.
It is also wider than the lift-gate on the truck.
With great difficulty, using shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, causing one non-life threatening injury, we get the computer out onto the lift gate, with the IO and FE cabinets hanging off the ends, but the center of gravity (thanks to DEC's decision to use an enormous FR transformer) well centered.
But once we get it on the ground, it won't budge. The 3-inch casters were designed to roll over smooth machine-room floors, not asphalt suburban driveways.
My intrepid friend Charles suggests we have a 300 horespower diesel-powered computer-tug right here. So, with the judicious application of ablative books (one on Songwriting, and a copy of the UCSD P-System Report) we carefullyback the truck up, so the edge of the lift-gate is bearing on the steel of the FE cabinet.
Charles gets into the truck, shifts into low-Reverse, and eases out on the clutch. Slowly everything begins to move, but when the computer jumps the bump from the driveway into the garage, the terrain became MUCH smoother, and it began accelerating. I rush from my vantage point at the FRONT of the mission, to the back, and LITERALLY throw myself between the advancing computer and the AMPEX memory box. I have the wind knocked out of me, but no broken bones, and the computer seemed to survive.
Ask me some other time about how I nearly killed my friend Josh by trying to drop a fully loaded SparcCenter 2000 on him.
IBM Disk Array Crushed (Score:2)
The machine was purchased for $1 million, to handle a large commercial database for the mortgage industry.
To make a long story short, the drive array (very expensive - fibre optic channel, and huge storage for the time) arrived with half of the case crushed inwards. No one claimed responsibility, but it looks like it had happened in the warehouse of the courier.
Not that interesting a story, but it was pretty stunning to see how carelessly equipment worth 6-digits was handled. Thank god for insurance.
Different "Big Iron" (Score:5, Funny)
The repair guy showed up with a low boy (flatbed truck) at a receiving bay and proceeded to FLY across the dock at top speed. Everyone yelled at him to slow down, that the brakes were out, but he was 'too experienced'. He knew what he was doing. He'd done this a million times.
Off the dock, onto the lowboy, through the fence on the lowboy, through the air, through the side of a 53' trailer, and there it stuck.
These things weigh ~ 12000 lbs, he jumped it like the General Lee into a tractor trailer, pretty awesome.
We had security video of a receiving guy driving one of these off the dock as well, that video got a LOT of airtime. At least more than the HiLo did.
Working in a warehouse you build up a long list of these stories. The guy who tipped over a HiLo is often a favorite, 13klbs hitting the floor of a warehouse, breaking it, breaking the floor, shaking the building, and walking away.
Adminning might be (slightly) safer, but nowhere near as much fun as driving heavy equipment with little regard for human life.
Re:Different "Big Iron" (Score:2)
So, like, is there a DivX version we can see?
Schwab
Becareful if you do it yourself (Score:2, Interesting)
Well they didn't follow his advice. They carefull loaded and moved it. Nothing looked broken. They hooked everything up and nothing. What they didn't realize was that the hard drives needed the arms put in a parked position. They didn't know that, and the hard drives were trashed. The warranty didn't cover that type of damage.
oops...
Big iron, yes, but hardly silicon... (Score:2)
Some 20 years ago, a train derailed a few trilevel autoracks near where I lived, spewing something like 20 Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Chevys all over the place. At that place, the mainline goes between several buildings so the space ios very restricted and the only way for the wreckdozers* to go to the action scene was to go OVER the spilled automobiles.
Now, that was quite a sight to see bulldozers flattening those brand new cars...
* A bulldozer fitted with a side crane that can lift the end of a railroad car and bring it back on the track.
Big iron insurance (Score:3, Interesting)
Anwyay, we bought a big Amdahl, I believe a 470/V7, and it showed up one day on a truck, outside our data center. The pallets needed to be shifted from the truck up onto the data center floor. As the forklift picked up the first load, the bright director of engineering wondered aloud "What happens if they drop it?" The observers started wondering about who covered the insurance for moving the system from the truck into our premises. After a few anxious looks, the delivery was stopped, and some phone calls made. Turns out the shipper covered it to the curb, and our in-house insurance covered it once it was on the floor, but NOBODY was covering the transition.
After some hurried calls, something like $50K was pledged to Lloyd's for a 24-hour $3M policy covering this very short-haul move. (The dollars might be wrong, and it might not have been Lloyd's. But you get the idea.)
At the end of the process, the system came up and all was well, and Amdahl had a great new reference site running a non-IBM operating system. But it was a good lesson in anticipating troubles.
Try manufacturing equipment (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the best ones I've had the experiance of reciving is a ChipShooter ( Big gatling gun type of machine that places R's and C's at about one every 0.08 seconds ). One of these big babies weigh in at the multi ton range and is about 24' long by about 12' wide. Now it should be noted that our shipper did strap this babie in. But the truker did hear a loud bang in the trailer just as he was leaving New York. But decided to not go and investigate. You need to remember the truker gets paid for delivery so he decided to not inspect seeing that the cargo was insured. Any ways he arives at our dock and we open the back doors and it seems that the staps had snapped. So for the entire trip from New York to Austin this very big machine was basicly sliding around the back of the truck. It actualy poked a hole in the side of the truck at one point. So we take pictures of it as recieved and unload it ( which takes multiple fork lifts as just one can't handle the length/weight ). After opeing the crate up it was descovered that the machine was bent all out of shape. So our supplier shipped us another one and filled a insurance claim on the one that shipped. The insurance ended up paying out a 600K claim!
Another funny one! We ordered a pick and place machine this time ( used to place flatpacks and BGA's ). The supplier decided to ship the unit to there local warhouse and uncrate it them selfs. From there warehouse they shipped it to us on a flatbed trailer. Well as the truck is pulling in to our drivway he cut the corner and the trailer hit a tree. Well Seeing that trees have these things sticking out of them called limbs. One of these limbs became loged into the machine and ripped the machine right off the truck. And the truck driver did'nt even notice this. he pulls into our recieving dock gets out and has the dumb struck look on his face (he can't seem to figure out where the machine was ). We point him toward the drive way and the totaly destroyed machine laying on the ground! I think this por truck driver got fired over it.
Remote Access Unit (Score:5, Funny)
C-130 Parachute delivery: $20,000
Poverty wage employees (soldiers): $8,000/year.
Watching the RAU turn into a dirtdart without it's parachute deploying: Priceless!
SPARCcenter 2000 fell off the FedEx truck! (Score:2, Interesting)
It took about a month of negotiations before Sun would replace it with a new one. Mainly because there was no FedEx shipping. After that all shipments came via Viking in the US. I wonder why?
-hh
Sun + Ebay + Inept Seller + FedEx = Big Trouble (Score:3, Interesting)
The box arrived via FedEx. No visible damge on the outside, but inside it was destroyed. The front panel was cracked, and the entire contents of box had somehow shifted forward, so the ports in the back were almost flush with the sheet metal. Inside, we could see how the brackets that held the motherboard assembly were actually bent from the impact.. Anyone who has seen the inside of a Sun box knows it's not like a Taiwan clone -- you don't just whip out the vice-grip pliers and twist it back into shape.
Now the fun begins. We call the seller, who basically gives us the runaround, stating that this is really a FedEx shipping damage claim and should be handled as such. Even though we paid for shipping, the seller is FedEx's customer for this transaction, so they have to initiate the claim (not us). As an added bonus, the morons who shipped the package underinsured it (5K instead of 10K, even though we paid for the full coverage). Then FedEx drags their feet for about two months before they actually have someone come out and inspect the damage. I'm getting really nervous at this point, because I have $10K tied up in what is now junkware. FedEx saw that the shipper did a crappy job of packing and denied the claim. FedEx is right, the packing was piss-poor. On the other hand, the box absorbed tremendous force -- how much packing material would it take to make a difference? Packing issues aside, FedEx's foot dragging was costing us time and money. It may have been within their rights to deny the claim, but their lack of prompt investigation was inexcusable.
In the end, the seller refunded the money, and allegedly fired the idiot who handled the shipment. My unsubstantiated guess is that someone was not merely mispacking the shipments; they may have been pocketing the money that was supposed to pay for full insurance. The problem was solved, but not before a few lessons were learned. We had very little recourse against anyone except the seller, and they could have easily screwed us with relative impunity.
Recent shipping story.. (Score:2)
I work at a small company, we design and manufacture "equipment". We also build up racks for customers with 3rd party equipment and our equipment.
Anyway, we shipped several racks (full-sized enclosed telco racks) to a location in Mexico City. Some of our people were on hand to make sure everything went smoothly.
When the racks arrived, the buyer realized that they could not get the racks up to their floor because of the rack's size (I can't remember where the bottleneck was). So.. They rigged up a system where they lowered a rope from the floor above them and pulled the racks up the side of the building. (the electronic goodies were removed before they did this btw) When they got the rack up to the top, they had to swing it to get it close enough to the building so that guys hanging out the window below could grab the bottom and pull it through their window (90 degrees on it's side).
Well, they got them all up there, minus some paint and plus some dings. The funny part is, this is just where the racks are being configured and tested. The racks are going to be moved to a different location in the near future.
Oh the stories.. (Score:2)
This sort of stuff happens all the time. At a startup where I worked, we waited for weeks to get our new custom painted file cabinets and shelves. But the shipper bopped them off the truck on handcarts and bent up the lower edge of all the file cabinets. They wouldn't even stand up straight. They had to replace about $100k worth of brand new custom office fixtures. And we had to work out of boxes for a few more weeks.
Some stories I've collected (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't find my favorite (it's in a collection of computer horror stories I misplaced), but here's a few from old Symbolics lore. The first is available in a few places on the net, the second is probably only on SMBX [smbx.org].
T306 Tales
3600s Come to Austin War StoriesThat's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Eventually(!) we persuaded them to ship it counter-to-counter, and one of the senior partners went to go pick it up personally, with one of the Asoks along for muscle.
They had the joy of watching the beast, in its packing crate, being unloaded from the plane's belly. Saw the loader put it on the conveyor. Saw the loader at the bottom get distracted. Nearly got busted by security for frantically pounding on the observation-area window, screaming and gesticulating. Which was silly, the loader was standing under a jet engine wearing ear protection. But they felt like they had to do something as they watched tens of thousands of dollars of behind-schedule equipment faw down go boom off the end of the conveyor.
Of course, the really funny part was that the client was a regional trucking company itself, and probably could have gotten the the thing trucked in himself via interline agreements. No, I take that back. The really funny part was the scorpion story, but that happened later.
Delivery "issues" (Score:5, Funny)
A dot-bomb I was contracting for had ordered three racks, stuffed with the requisite servers, switches and so forth (mostly Compaq and Cisco stuff). The boss was great at programming, but not so bright when it came to physical items.
The populated racks arrived in town, at the vendor's local warehouse. They called and asked how it should be delivered. The boss insisted on talking to them, rather than letting the shipping/receiving guy deal with the new toys. Consequently the vendor was told, by the boss, that we had a loading dock at our building. We did not.
"But I thought a loading zone was the same as a loading dock." he later declared. Sorry Dean, they are different.
So the truck & racks arrived. Naturally, they'd sent a truck without a hydraulic/electric tailgate, and only one guy. Each rack was about 1100 lbs. The boss wanted to try unloading them then and there, but even he soon realized that that was not feasible. So they went back.
Several days passed, but the vendor had no suitable truck. After a lot of tantrums from the boss, they finally rented a truck with the necessary tailgate. It arrived at our building, and unloaded the racks and their pallets. Incidentally, everything was properly secured inside the truck both times.
Unfortunately, the boss (who had personally ordered the equipment, which was totally wrong for our needs, but that's another story) never checked dimensions. The racks were 1/2" taller than the elevator doors.
Impatient boss didn't want to remove the servers, etc., disassemble the racks and take the pieces upstairs. Rather, he insisted on getting everyone from the office, removing the pallets (after which the racks were still that 1/2" too tall) and trying to ram them through the doors. Dean sometimes had a hard time with concepts like "metal" and "concrete". Several bad dents and chips later, he gave up.
Next, Dean thought of the brilliant idea of tilting 1100 lb racks. On a tile floor. Even with everyone helping, once tilted, it started sliding uncontrollably and fell over with a massive boom.
Did this discourage him? Nope. He (with help) shoved the first one into the elevator, and somehow got it angled in there. When the doors closed, they scraped along the bottom corner of the rack, and the stainless steel took a nasty gouging.
Unfortunately, the elevator was rated for 800 lbs, not 1100lbs, certainly not 1100lbs with Dean and three helpers = almost 2000 lbs. Nothing dramatic, but the elevator safeties cut in and the elevator wouldn't budge.
Deans's solution? Use a screwdriver and force the fireman's override switch on, of course. I decided it was prudent to take lunch just then. When I got back, they'd gotten:
When they finally made it into the server room, we discovered that, as one might suspect, a number of the units did not function, and had to be replaced. Sure enough, the boss tried to get it replaced on warranty, but I left not long after, so I don't know how things played out...
Re:Use lots of packing peanuts (Score:2)
Re:Use lots of packing peanuts (Score:2)
No worries.
Re:nightmare story? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Shipping Stories. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ha. I can one-up you on that one.
One time, we had to return some monitors to a supplier because they were supposed to be new but clearly they were refurbs - peeling the labels off of the box we found records of the monitors being in the repair shop.
So somehow we managed to pack two 19" Sony Multiscan G400's in the original packaging into the back seat of a Toyota Camry. These were so big that you could not put one in the front seat or the trunk. What happenned when we got to the warehouse is another storey entirely. But I can tell you that the back door of a Camry will take boxes that are 49" by 49" the side and not a hair bigger.
Re:My E-10k is WHERE? (Score:2, Funny)
Let me get this straight - you waited around on Christmas day for a server?
Re:My E-10k is WHERE? (Score:3, Funny)
Shouldn't you have been waiting for a sleigh?
On the other hand, imagine some very young geek in that other Oak Hill when the truck showed. "Hey, Santa did get my letter!"