> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:09 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Peter Corlett via cctalk
>> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 06:30:10PM +0000, Henk Gooijen via cctalk wrote:
>> ...
>>> Only UPS did … and yes, the “horror” stories *are* true. They managed to
>>> drop
>>> the package. Not from 4 inches above ground, but more, because a *steel
>>> corner* had a dent!
>>
>> Hence that old joke: "If being air dropped out of a C-130 into a minefield
>> constitutes 'moderately rough handling', what constitutes 'very rough
>> handling'?" "Being shipped UPS".
>
> I'm reminded of a legendary story from a long time ago, of a DEC disk being
> air-shipped to a customer. RP03? Not sure, but something of that size class.
>
> The story was that the shipping company hadn't strapped it down properly, so
> when the plane applied takeoff power, the drive slid backwards in the cargo
> hold. Fast enough to exit the hold through the airplane skin, landing on the
> runway with a nice bounce.
>
> The drive was taken back to Maynard, where it was observed that the corner of
> the frame was badly bent. The techs propped it up on a cinder block and
> turned the drive on; it worked fine.
>
> Sure sounds like a fairy tale, but it's a fun one.
Friend who owned a larger regional ISP back in the day bought a new Ascend MAX.
It shipped UPS and arrived with a perfect boot print on the side of the box. To
this day we still make jokes about UPS playing soccer with the package.
(Semi-related side story; A few months after installation, the Max started
dropping calls on one line card. Ascend refused to RMA it because it passed
diagnostics. They went back and forth over for a week or so until one day their
sysadmin had enough; He calmly removed the card from the chassis and, with an
Ascend tech on speakerphone, smashed the thing to bits with a hammer. “Oh, it
just failed. Won’t pass diagnostics anymore.” He got his RMA number. The
replacement card worked without issue for the next several years.)
