22 Apr
2011
22 Apr
'11
1:42 p.m.
On 4/22/11 3:44 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
As you may have guessed, I quite like practical jokes. I play them, and I
can take them. But...
The joke has to be funny to all involved. That means no real danger (to
anyone), no major loss or damage. It is not funny if somebody gets
connected across a high voltage supply. It's not funny if they end up
losing months of results. It's not funny if a patient ends up with the
wrong drugs or the wrong doses (even if unintentional).
On the other hand, my colour changing adpater (a DE15 plug wired to a DE15
socket with VGA pinouts so that most pins go straight through but the
R,G,B signals are cyclically permuted [1] is quite amusing if connectrd
to somebody's PC when they are developing a video driver. Well, provided
you tell him before he spends too long debugging his code :-)
[1] This has a serious use, of course in determining whether a mising
colour is due to a problem in the monitor or the video card.
-tony
It is certainly not unique to the medical
profession. But few
non-military fields are as vicious. In auto repair, the newbie would be
sent to get spotted paint, rubber nails, and a metric Crescent wrench (all
of which actually exist).
In the casino industry, it is common to send newbies to other casinos
to get the "crank" for the Big Six wheel. Big Six wheels are
motor-driven and have no crank. Employees at other casinos know this
trick of course, and sometimes send the newbie back with things like
broken umbrella handles, etc.
It's all in good fun, and is far less brutal (and dangerous to all