(discussed previously on HN 5 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 – and 10 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708)
I can only imagine the euphoria of reconciling the inputs of “the things I know to be true of computers and email” and “my emails won’t send further than 500 miles”. What a great story - thanks for posting the original.
- Car allergic to vanilla ice cream: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wkw/humour/carproblems.txt
- Can't log in when standing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...
- OpenOffice won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...
- The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining: https://predr.ag/blog/wifi-only-works-when-its-raining/
Turns out it was old building with loose floorboards. The vibrational force of standing up was enough to short out a failing power supply. As long as I sat my desk, it was fine.
But I had a co-worker who had a worse problem with getting up to get a drink of water. Once while she was kitchen, an eight foot steel lighting ballast came loose from the ceiling and felt right onto her chair.That what-if memory still haunts me.
Or, was it?
https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-...
(not disclaiming that it wasn't, but that "chair piston causes EM surge" had me driven crazy for the longest time til I was able to pinpoint the cause)
When it stopped happening in the spring, and started again in the fall, it became obvious -- my apartment was too cold. The heat from the first failed boot sufficiently heated up the system to boot the second time.
Canadian winter for you, I guess.