The Dog Barks When the Phone Rings: An Engineers Guide to Solving Problems

Heck surge protector might not be the right term. It's some type of plug with a push-in switch, a test button, and some warning that if the test doesn't work, don't use the plug. UPS systems and computer equipment exhibit leakage currents. These currents are a natural result of the common mode filters present in computers and UPSs.

These leakage currents may be large enough to ""fool"" the GFI and cause it to trip. I don't have a UPS, but arguably a fair amount of stuff on 1 socket. Mix this in with most the house being on the same circuit and I'm guessing I've got the causal relationship the wrong way around.

If so, then yeah, maybe, but the fact that it only happened when you used your dryer would make me pause.

Practical insights for the engineering crowd

Maybe the additional load from the dryer caused the leakage from the electronics to become high enough to trip? Dunno, I'm not an electrician. Ah, just a bit more knowledgeable than some. There's only 1 plug on the other side of the GFCI, being the tumble dryer, and we have a master plug for outdoors so most of the time the GFCI isn't in the equation. The other 10 plugs on the same circuit of about 15 in the house are on the side that'd remain powered, and bar the time the psu blew they always remained active whenever the GFCI tripped.

It's a shame it's not an obvious connection, I'd love to bill the replacement parts to the Letting Agency, especially the parts that didn't full break could of been a good excuse for an upgrade ;p. I guess it could have been caused by the extra load that did get put on for an instant before the GFCI detected some leakage and tripped? Correlation may not be the cause, but quite often a clue.

"Whenever my dog barks my computer crashes." : talesfromtechsupport

Especially when it comes to non-tech friendly individuals when describing tech problems. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'. The ultimate cause of both observed phenomena was the same racoons rooting around in the trash. In both cases there was an intermediate step racoons set off motion detector, which draws too much current, which causes a crash: I never said correlation wasn't useful, I was just saying that one shouldn't jump to conclusions about causal links like CFO did here: I love tech stories like this.

It's good that he was able to figure out when it happened. That's one of the hardest things to get out of users sometimes. You ask them, what were you doing when it happened. It may not be very helpful but it's a way of saying that nothing is different from what they usually do, so they aren't the cause of the problem.

Then again, people lie. A lady had called in because her signal kept dropping out for a couple of seconds. Short story short, the dumbass tech that did her install had mounted her satellite dish to her gate, so she would lose signal every time someone opened the gate because the dish got pulled out of alignment and would get back in alignment when the gate closed. Reminds me of one 20 years or so where I had a new computer that had a tendency to crash when I sat down at the desk.

After much headscratching, I eventually figured out it was just extremely shock-sensitive. Turned out there was a hairline crack in the graphics card. This is almost as good as the mile e-mail problem. Finally, they traced it to an HVAC motor on an elevator. When the elevator car went past their floor, the motor was putting out electrical interference that caused a problem on the computer. They properly grounded the motor and the issue was resolved. For a moment, I was thinking of a much more insidious problem.

No problem with any DOS programs". Problem turned out to be a cracked flyback transformer on her CRT monitor. When the monitor switched scan rates upon entering Windows, the high frequency audio produced by the broken flyback was heard by the dog. One enterprise I worked for banned this practice as the end users were calling the main help desk for support and to complain about work done privately.

Some of those "You turned on the speaker 2 years ago and the HD failed so the company needs to replace my computer" calls. So they banned any IT person from working off the clock for any employee. The consultancy was just me and two other guys. We'd get these requests and huddle together to weigh the risks of helping out the specific individual making the ask. It led to some pretty funny game plans. If the computer is in the cellar and there's any dungeon equipment on the walls, code word "Clarice" means call the client and tell him you need to pull me out for an emergency outage.

It is going to seem strange but this genuinely happens to my mums PC, if the dog barks near it when it is running it shuts off as if you had just pulled the power I was going to have a go at diagnosing the fault but it is an old q core 2 quad that is at it's end of life I'm gonna replace it with a g skylake build running mint soon. An Engineer's Guide to Solving Problems". In this case, the dog barking did not cause the crash. The thing that caused the crash also caused the dog to bark. When fighting dogs, a single raccoon is easily a match for 2 or more hounds bred specifically for tracking and fighting raccoons.

It is unlikely that any dog would try to summon a creature that would kill it as soon as look at it. It is equally unlikely that a raccoon would respond to a summons from a creature that has been bred to track it down and kill it. I thought he forgot about one of those clap-on outlets that turn stuff off when you clap, and had his PC plugged into it. Walk in, t-shoot equipment, outlets.

While I'm standing in the kitchen, talking to the couple, phone rings. Wife takes it, wanders into other room. After a couple minutes, "it dropped again! So I ask her, "do you always take your calls in their. Ask husband where he talks on the phone. Do a lap of living room, find a motion sensor, and ask about alarm system. Turns out, they had it "removed" a year before.

And by "removed," ripped control panel off wall. Found the rest in a back closet, still hooked up. Everytime the wife went to living room, she would trip the motion sensor, and it would drop the call, trying to dial out. Sounds like me at work today. Coworker comes over and says her computer died. As I walk over I hear a couple other mentions of the power being out in that row.

Turns out somebody had brought in their little space heater and tripped the circuit. No more heaters for you Reminds me of either a comment or part of a post in this reddit about the server that only worked with a picture of a saint on it. Reminds me of a tale I heard many years ago.

I have Nik idea if it's true or not, but it's still a good story! A phone tech goes to investigate a faulty service and is told that the household phone doesn't ring. The couple living there tell him that it hasn't rung for ages and they just rely on the dog to tell them when someone is trying to call. Apparently whenever the barks like crazy it means there's someone calling the house phone.

The tech checks out the dog and sees that he's chained up in the back yard to a spike in the ground. Upon investigation the tech finds that the spike has nicked the phone line and that the dog was getting a 50v shock whenever someone called the house. I used to believe this story when I was younger, but more electrical experience has thrown doubt over it's validity.

Still, a small part of me still wants it to be true! Ok, I really didn't expect a user's assumption of the problem's cause to be accurate. If the floods just take too much power, should the PC not just crash and only reboot after the floods are turned off again? I'm not at all an electrician, but I assume that the combination of the floods and the computer, combined with the age of the wiring in the older house, created an environment that wasn't as straight forward and steady as that.

My guess is that within the time that the floods were powering up, just barely enough juice was drawn off the PC to kick it into a reboot, but that the environment stabilized once the floods were up to full bright. Probably the lucky thing is that the PC never got fried a couple minutes later when the floods timed out. Just a guess though, electricity scares me. Not an electrician either, but I think it's inrush current, basically the floods take so much power to turn on that it causes voltage drop on the line.

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Welcome to Reddit, the front page of the internet. Become a Redditor and subscribe to one of thousands of communities. The only thing that i dislike is the cover art. Mar 10, Moan rated it it was amazing. Very good engineering guide to a EE! Ac rated it really liked it Nov 21, Ric Semilla rated it really liked it Oct 18, Smolz rated it it was amazing Oct 25, Robert Laukhuff rated it really liked it Mar 22, Joe Sacher rated it it was amazing May 02, Matt rated it it was amazing Sep 28, Rob rated it really liked it Mar 18, Akshay rated it really liked it Sep 09, Karen Vradelis rated it liked it Sep 04, Zaniya Allen rated it it was amazing Mar 14, PCB rated it it was amazing Feb 08, James Lynam rated it really liked it Sep 29, Mera rated it it was amazing Mar 26, Stephen Henderson rated it really liked it Dec 31, Will rated it really liked it Aug 11, Mike Klotz rated it really liked it Oct 20, Joseph rated it really liked it Sep 01, Themos Kallos rated it it was ok Jan 10, Frederick Rotzien marked it as to-read Sep 01, Rhonda marked it as to-read Sep 01, Diana Senn marked it as to-read Sep 01, Gordon Bingham marked it as to-read Sep 01, Nickie marked it as to-read Sep 01, Jo-Ann Murphy marked it as to-read Sep 01, Teresa Lavender marked it as to-read Sep 01, Emilie Titchen marked it as to-read Sep 01, Yes, this book is written primarily for engineers.

I am NOT an engineer.

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BUT - I liked this book. Sometimes people forget that communicating is a 2-way exercise in interpretation, as is humorously illustrated here! This is a book about following a path, creating a checklist, etc. It is filled with examples, stories and anecdotes. It is a very well written, highly understandable guide I especially enjoyed the story behind the book's title.

Oct 06, Teagan rated it really liked it. It's a very well written book.

The Dog Barks When the Phone Rings: An Engineer's Guide to Solving Problems

The only thing that i dislike is the cover art. Mar 10, Moan rated it it was amazing. Very good engineering guide to a EE! Ac rated it really liked it Nov 21, Ric Semilla rated it really liked it Oct 18, Smolz rated it it was amazing Oct 25, Robert Laukhuff rated it really liked it Mar 22, Joe Sacher rated it it was amazing May 02, Matt rated it it was amazing Sep 28, Rob rated it really liked it Mar 18, Akshay rated it really liked it Sep 09, Karen Vradelis rated it liked it Sep 04, Zaniya Allen rated it it was amazing Mar 14, PCB rated it it was amazing Feb 08, James Lynam rated it really liked it Sep 29, Mera rated it it was amazing Mar 26, Stephen Henderson rated it really liked it Dec 31, Will rated it really liked it Aug 11, Mike Klotz rated it really liked it Oct 20, Joseph rated it really liked it Sep 01,