Clueless Field Service

At one job, I want back to the stock room to find three monitors that were tagged "BAD (RED|GREEN) GUN". One was repairable by straightening out the bent pin. The other two were too crimped and broke off. Fortunately, we had a pile of (genuinely) dead ones that could be stripped for the cables. This was in Antarctica. Couldn't exactly send out for spares (until sunrise). At that same place, the other techs ooh'ed and aah'ed when I replaced a surface mount chip that drove the parallel port on a Dell 316sx. (When I went to that service call, after half- an-hour of debugging the machine (which still booted and ran), the customer commented, "maybe it won't print because of all the smoke that was coming out of it." I thought he was joking at first. I mean, wouldn't you mention _that_ in the first five minutes of describing the problem? Upon closer examination, I could see the hole in the package. New chip, no problem.) -ethan