When I was working as lead (actually: only) developer for a digital image processing system for microscopy at the university hospital, we encountered problems due to the construction going on at the hospital. Whole new buildings were being set up. Just as a lab technician had readied a set of slides for analysis using quantitative fluorescence microscopy using my code, the builders started driving piles into the ground. Obviously, this rather scuppered the attempts to get sharp fluorescence images at about 1000x magnification, especially when using a couple of seconds of exposure time. Needless to say we were not amused. We managed to contact the foreman, who was very helpful, and agreed to schedule pile driving around our data acquisition times (he already scheduled it around the more delicate forms of surgery, for obvious reasons). When all pile driving was done, they builders actually brought cake for the entire lab to compensate for all the trouble they had caused us (which in the end, was very little).

A very nice resolution of the problem, I thought.

Good to hear you got a 'nice resolution' to your fluorescence microscopy :)

Good to see you had a 'nice resolution' to your fluorescence microscopy problem

I used to work next to a factory building that was being demolished. The basement was so solid they didn't really know how to get rid of it. Eventually they tried explosives, but it didn't do much. So they went into Full Clarkson Mode™ and used more. They put the warning siren on so lots of excited geeks rushed to the side of the building to watch, all of whom ducked when a shower of stones hit the side of our building.

They later decided to cancel the explosives as apparently it took out sensitive experiments in a nearby lab building - not because a load of geeks nearly got a shower of stones!

Everybody like big boom.

Personally, I prefer watching them on a screen.

... in the correct time and place.

About three point seven billion years ago in Internet Time (call it the early 70s), we were pushing a new road through a property adjacent to mine in Mendocino County. This meant we had to remove quite a few redwood tree stumps. Most of the time we were able to roll them out of the ground using heavy equipment, but once in a while we had to use dynamite. Late one afternoon, we set off a shot with the intention of blasting three stumps simultaneously. The first two went off, the final one in the string did not. This is NOT GOOD.

Being late in the day, we decided to knock off and think about it overnight, leaving a trail of "warning, unexploded dynamite, DO NOT ENTER" signs in our wake.

At about 3:30AM I was awakened by a largish BOOM!

At first light, we discovered the third stump had been nicely rolled out.

Ah yes, the exothermic method of relocating things. For anyone remotely interested in this art, I recommend searching out recordings of Blaster Bates and his after dinner speeches.

Obvious really >>>>>>>

Yes, I got it wrong once. The rotten stump wasn't as stuck as we thought and ended up in the branches half way up the next tree in the avenue.

Obvious icon!

"Everybody like big boom."

Not everyone. I was glad to have missed the car bomb in our lab's entrance gate.

"The basement was so solid they didn't really know how to get rid of it."

Sound like it would make an ideal foundation

I previously worked for a metal bashing company which had a 1,000t Stanko press. We were only allowed to use it during the day as apparently it disturbed the neighbours (the council had located sheltered housing bungalows right up against the factory fence, which made no sense to us) but when in use the offices would shake every few seconds; fortunately we didn't have any particularly delicate jobs to do so it was more annoying than anything.

By the time we consolidated and closed that particular unit the press had been largely superseded by newer technology and it was scrapped - even that wasn't easy given that it was fastened down to a very large lump of concrete and sitting in a 10' deep pit.

I'm confused why they would want to move the Windows laptops back to 2.4GHz if they worked just fine with 5GHz.

Why not move them back if that band will otherwise be unused? It at least means more devices can use the 5GHz band before congestion becomes a problem.

2.4 gets congested long before 5. Not to mention the fact 2.4 is a giant dumping ground for RF in the first place!

In my experience, It's pretty much only useful for low speed IOT stuff or filling in where 5GHz doesn't propagate in congested areas.

Except these days the 5GHz band is getting congested as well, which is why you need a 6GHz router! (And a compatible phone, laptop, etc.)

Or wired ethernet where you can.

Apple gear defaults to 5ghz; I'm assuming this was a US school, where I'd imagine most laptops would be Apple.

Shift the Windows laptops back to 2.4ghz and you've nicely split your spectrum usage...

Whilst working on the HP³ Mole for the Mars Insight Lander we had a lab where we had a 5m tall cylinder that we filled with soils to represent the martian regolith for testing.

We discovered we basically had to empty it and refill it every week or so, because otherwise it became too compacted to use.

Investigation revealed that the nearby Autobahn provided a tiny but continual level of vibrations that caused the soil to compact over time. Very much an unexpected result, since you couldnt even hear the Autobahn from the Institute.

This was not a big deal, it just meant emptying and refilling the test chamber regularly, but it's a perfect example that it's always the unexpected things that catch you out...

You've got an interesting job.

We occasionally had similar issues with Highway 280 and the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Also, once in a while we could trace issues with the Stanford Dish to Hwy 280 ...

Fortunately, 280's not a truck route. Now you know two of the reasons why. Yes, there are others, mostly esthetic and NIMBY related.

Some years ago, we had a problem with alignment on some largish machinery which had been built on a huge concrete structure. The engineers were blamed for a poor installation but then we were called to install instrumentation and logging to see what was actually happening whilst the machinery was running. It was thought that one element (weighing several tonnes) must be changing shape during operation; unexpected, unlikely but possible.

We found a rhythm to the issues: Every twelve hours or so, things would cycle between good, poor, bad, poor, good and so on. Tides. Moving/distorting the entire building......

We joked with the project manager that he could sit in his chair outside and command the sea to go back. He wasn't a Cnut and took the banter in good humour.... The solution to the issue involved a different flexible coupling between rotating parts.

Friday --->

A friend couldn't understand why her microwave internet link (in the pre broadband days when the alternative was dialup) would drop out periodically, but not at the same time every day. It was eventually traced to the fact the cottage was on the sea front and the link pointed out across the bay, every time there was a spring high tide it would distort the signal. Some realignment of the link cured the problem.

A few years ago (OK, about a decade - I'm old) we got the usual zero notice that some outpatient services were being moved to a local, new build GP surgery/residential flats building, close to the hospital.

No time to order and run in fibre so the only game in town was a laser link from the roof of the hospital wing opposite the GP building. The wing that houses our ED/Trauma/Resus services.

All worked well for a time and then the connection would intermittently drop and come back up. We began physically resetting the laser at the hospital end each time it happened and we'd see the connection come back.

Over time this got worse and worse and we just could not work out why. We did suspect that the trees between the hospital and the GP building were blocking the laser as they came back into leaf, maybe the blossom was having an effect.

We called in the company that originally fitted the kit to have a look and they ran some alignment checks at both ends. They discovered the root cause and implemented a fix.

On top of the roof of the ED/Trauma/Resus wing is the helipad for the Air Ambulance. Repeated heli-action vibrations had caused the laser head to slowly, slightly, lose alignment. The fix was a bigger mounting.

We ran in fibre soon after.

>>Tides. Moving/distorting the entire building......

IRIC this is the case for the LHC at CERN - they have, apparently, to adjust for the tide (such as it is) in lake Geneva distorting the ring and also passing traffic/trains can cause geometry/RFI issues.

I carried out some install work at a major UK airport - right next to the airfield apron. We'd cleared it with the operator, given them all of the frequencies, locations and power levels we'd be using. DFS all enabled with RADAR detection etc and been given the all clear.

It was nearly impossible to get stable links. They'd come up with perfect quality then totally drop out. Initially, I figured it was just going to be proximity to airport rain RADAR or similar that was jamming up the whole band, but something about the pattern didn't quite fit. So I dropped the power right down and ran it outside of the DFS areas. Same issue.

I then took at look with an analyser and found that whatever channel the equipment was set to, got a whole load of garbage back at high power. Initially I figured this might be some kind of reflection off a nearby structure. Then I noticed that it took a few seconds before it happened after a channel change. I then set it to a non-standard channel width and it all but cleared up.

It was never confirmed, but it looks like we were having a fight with some kind of drone countermeasures. Which is interesting, because I feel like I remember when the whole Gatwick thing was going on that one of the issues is that jammers weren't allowed, even for use by the authorities. Might be misremembering that though (or it may have changed).

Surely the authorities would set up the jammer in a way to not jam their own drones. I seem to recall that they floated theories that the malicious Gatwick drones were flying pre-programmed routes so not subject to control channel interference, but that eventually they realised that the repeated reports of drones were actually the authority's drones looking for the perps.

I was at a conference in Marina Bay Sands, and was part of the team responsible for rolling out the WiFi

All was going well, until we started getting DFS events in the logs. Changi is, of course, a fair while away....

It wasn't until we saw the coast guard's boat patrolling the bay that we worked out that it was using radar!

(The range covers fourth graders in elementary school all the way up to high school kids.)

I'm sorry if we're going to use strange foreign measurements some kind of translation is required.

Even watching South Park has not taught me the US system. I barely understand the English one since re numbered it some time back.

Especially when they could have just said "10 year olds through to 17 year olds" or whatever the numbers should be. Universal measures are useful.

But then it would depend on which planet you are reading this story on!

For example, if you were in the Saturn system then they would be in the range of 0.34 to 0.58 years old!

K is kindergarten, roughly 5 years old.

First grade is the first grade after that. Roughly 6 year olds.

12th grade is the last year of high school. Roughly 18 years.

It is usually split into Elementary school (K-5 or K-6), Junior High (6-8, 7-9, or 7 and 8, depending on district). Some districts opt for Middle School which can change these numbers a trifle, with many starting at 5th grade. Highschool is either 9-12 or 10-12.

Watching South Park is not a good way to learn about ANYTHING that goes on in the US ... except our almost universal dislike of the convicted criminal occupying the White House, and his sycophants, book lickers, ass kissers and assorted other scum.

Well, quite.

It's ok, we know that South Park isn't a documentary.

For starters I think they've only had one school shooting on the show.

I was once at a telecoms standards meeting. Possibly Osaka, but, back then, it was all a blur, in to 2000's.

Was chatting with a colleague when, all of a sudden, the air was filled with the most abusive of language

A single event on the access points had caused a particular, but default, wifi chipset driver to **** the bed.

At least 30 laptops bluescreened simultaneously!

I'm glad I came across this today, as I'm having random WiFi issues in one part of the building and I've been at a loss to explain what's causing it.

I now know to go outside and look for cranes.

If delegating probably wise to specify construction cranes otherwise your twitcher PYI might pop back to inform you "sorry boss no cranes; some scruffy ducks and tatty bin turkeys."

I was once instructed to follow the highway for about 50 km and turn left at the giant moa. While that area abounded in giant bananas, giant pineapples and such like, I was puzzled why anyone would erect a giant model of an extinct New Zealand flightless bird in subtropical Australia - the native non extinct emu would make more sense.

Never found the moa. Understandable. It was of course the giant mower. (Alias lawn tractor.)

.... don't that! Or at least something similar.

The culprit on the 2.4 GHz dropping out at home was the ultra-noisy baby monitor used by the D to monitor the GD!

The fix was to puchase a WiFi enabled camera that worked with the 2.4 GHz, rather than against it.

"We looked at the spectrum analyzer and the entire 2.4GHz spectrum across all channels was blanketed by a very strong signal,"

Good catch on spotting the crane operator! If this occured during lunchtime i'd be sprinting towards the cafetaria with a mallet to expedite the microwave replacement.