But that's the way we've always done it

It's many years ago, and this fresh-from-college pilot fish is working for an engineering company, writing an application for its newly installed minicomputer.

"This machine had its own small glass house on the same floor as production for large blueprints," fish says.

"Shortly after initial installation, the machine started blowing power supplies. Nobody knew why, but almost every day we'd come in to find the machine dead, and a fried power supply."

These aren't off-the-shelf power supplies, either; every time one of them dies, a new one has to be shipped in from the manufacturer. And in short order, fish's company has used all the replacement units the manufacturer has, and is down to using prototype bread-boarded power supplies.

Clearly, something has to be done. And the immediate reason for the blowouts is just as clear. Even though both the building owner and the local power company swear that the circuit is conditioned, two separate power-line monitors show spikes over 400 volts on the 120-volt line every day at about the same time, around midnight.

Finally, fish and his boss decide to stay late and watch what's happening.

It's just after midnight when the second shift is ready to shut down for the night. Fish and his boss are talking as the shift supervisor walks past them to the big red button on the wall that will cut power to all the big blueprint machines at once.

Supervisor slaps the button -- from the computer room behind him, fish hears a sound -- wheeeeeeeee...*ZAP*! -- as the power supply dies.

"Turned out every one of those blueprint machines had a 5-horsepower motor in it," groans fish. "When all were turned off at once, they dumped an inductive surge back into the AC line. And, contrary to the building's promises, our computer was just tapped into that same line.

"There was an electrician in the next morning."

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