#409 – Circuit

My first regular job with a paycheck was at a lighting store. Part of my duties was to unpack and install light fixtures on the display floor. At the back of the store behind the counter was a grid of light switches that could turn power on or off to different sections of the displays. At first I was very paranoid and diligent about turning the power off before working in that area. Luckily I was trained to treat all wires like they were live. It was quite surprised one day after I finished installing a ceiling light. I went behind the counter to flip the power back on only to realize that it had been on the whole time. The next time I did that my luck had ran out and I got a nice jolt of electricity into my body. I managed to stay on the ladder and didn’t fall into the crowd of hanging lights that surrounded me. I only shocked myself twice in the 3 years I worked there.

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0 thoughts on “#409 – Circuit”

  1. PsychoDuck says:

    All my pens are faulty. I am constantly in a state of shock 😛

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  2. MoX says:

    I am reminded of a psych class where we were discussing electro-convulsive therapy. My teacher described how they shock a person into seizures and it cures depression 80% of the time. I exclaimed “THAT’S SHOCKING!” half the class didn’t get it, the other half groaned.
    Chris, you are not the only one to have been shocked. I think I have been shocked so many times the I have acquired a taste for light jolt of electricity.

  3. Bobs says:

    Ive never dealt with large ammounts of electricity, only stuff under 12 volts, batteries n stuff. although, one time, when I went to unplug some kind of auto shop equipment from an extension cord, then female connector fell off, and the wires touched my palm. DC and AC are two completly difrent kinds of shocks, but i think DC is a bit worse.

  4. MoosePhysh says:

    The highest voltage I’ve worked with is 480VAC. It was interesting. That doesn’t scare me as much as when the transformer isn’t wired correctly.

    @ Bobs
    I would think that AC is worse since the alternating current ends up freezing your muscles and you can’t get get away and then you die. At least after the initial shock with DC you can let go and run away, jump up and down, curse vehemently, or whatever you prefer. Of course, if you get a few mA through the heart you’re probably dead regardless.

  5. MaskedMan says:

    DC can cause you to “clamp” also. Used to serve on submarines, and we lost an electrician to 250VDC – he got stupid and impatient (impatient on energized swtich gear == ‘stupid’ squared) during a “clean and inspect” and went into a pannel without a safety man. We found him clamped to a live 250VDC buss bar, well and truly dead.

  6. Shiloh says:

    I grabbed hold of an electric fence once. I didn’t think it was on ’cause it didn’t do anything to the sticks I threw at it. Anyways, it was one. I was young and stupid and fortunately the voltage wasn’t all that much.

  7. Haragorn says:

    So, I got Traget Practice for Christmas. Apparently, it had been intended as a birthday gift from my father, but arrived too late. So, years from now, when I look back at it, I’ll think it was a birthday present. It’s even got a birthday greeting from Chris.

  8. BillyJoeBob says:

    :O oh damn MaskedMan.

    I have had quite a few unpleasant shocks, such as the time I accidently tapped a capacitor of a disposable camera while trying to make a home made gauss gun ( quite possible, take that fiction!). It wasn’t fun :S

    High voltage electricity scares me.

  9. Emu Legs says:

    One should wonder the metaphorical, and philisophical ramifica- heh heh, Biff got hurt again.

  10. Draq says:

    I’m not sure what kind of voltage is in the flash capacitor on a camera, but I wouldn’t advise taking one apart unless you like explosions and electrical burns.

    Yes, the camera EXPLODED.

  11. Writing checks is a rarity for me. I only do it once a month for rent or when I get a check from relatives.

  12. Elli says:

    I got shocked once, when I was ten. I was plugging in the clothes dryer and I accidentally touched the prongs. It wasn’t much voltage, thankfully.

  13. Gobbledegook says:

    I got shocked twice by the same power line in less than two minutes… I was knocking down a wall in my kitchen and was re-wiring the outlets to make up for the loss of wall space.
    I reached up and grabbed a wire and suddenly it felt like ants were crawling around on my fingers. Then the pain began and I fell down. As I was getting back up, I grabbed the wall for support, but my previous encounter with the live wire had caused it to come loose and was hanging freely right where I grabbed the wall. I ended up on the floor again in a matter of seconds.

  14. lost260 says:

    Last year, when I was hanging Halloween lights, I forgot to replace all the broken bulbs. This, compounded with the fact that we were setting up lights WHILE kids were coming, caused me to get shocked a number of times. They were not high voltage shocks, but they sure were startling… I think I got shocked at least three to five times (I sort of lost count there after a while).

  15. Chivalrybean says:

    That has never happened when I use my electronic bill pay.

    I do have a story for ya’ll though. I was around the age of 6. I found a bobby pin. I knew better, but I stuck it in the electric socket in the apartment we lived in. It shot out an orange spark and a bunch on the electricity went out, threw a breaker I guess. I fervently denied knowing what happened. The next day though, since I thought the sparking was so neat, I decided I’d show my sister who is four years older than me. I made her promise not to tell, though. Well, after I stuck the bobby pin in the socket again, she told on me, but I think it was for the better. The bring orange sparks were cool though.

    The moral of the story, don’t show your older sister anything cool, she will tell on you. {:0D

  16. Seraphine says:

    Some people get off on electricity
    and would pay extra for a pen like that.

  17. Hanii Puppy says:

    @ Bobs, Masked, and anyone else who talks about the dangers of working with high voltage electricity:

    It doesn’t matter how high the voltage of the electricity is – you can have 1,000,000 volts pass through you safely – it’s the ampage that matters. You could have 1,000 volts pass through you safely, but 10mV kill you if the ampage is higher than 0.5A (500mA)

  18. Will says:

    @Draq

    i made the mistake of taking apart a disposable camera once. something my friends and I have done before(take out the film and have a flash-o-matic). But this one time i got curious and started poking around, forgetting that i was holding the screwdriver by the metal part, and accidentally connected the two little wires that touch to connect the flash’s circuit. Needless to say, my hands and forearms tensed up and i had to try throwing it on the ground. Took about two tries before my hands let go. very tingly…

    lesson of the day: if your going to fiddle with electricity, at least use your tools correctly.

  19. Silfedac says:

    You guys are making me feel left out. I’ve never had a brush with electricity.

    Except for testing batteries, that is.

  20. Hanii Puppy says:

    oh, and btw, how do you electrocute yourself by putting in light-bulbs? I’ve only ever electrocuted myself once, and that was when i was wee. I put my finger into a light socket to see if it was on or not. Guess which.

  21. Devi says:

    hmm, i myself have managed to avoid any crazy stories about electric shocks…but i do remember a particular instance in my freshmen year of high school. i was a member of the Jazz Band and, while a lot of fun, it didn’t necessarily attract the brightest of students. i became friends with this one girl who was a senior at the time, and during rehersals we would goof off with the equipment for the instruments. well, she thought it would be a great idea to stick her car key into one of the plugs on the amplifier (don’t ask me what kind it was; i have a crappy memory for those sorts of things). it made an interesting addition to the choir’s version of “Moondance”

  22. MaskedMan says:

    @Hanii Puppy:
    Yes, I know that amerage is what kills. However, there’s no way to plug a meter into the “Main Battery Buss-Dead Electrician” circuit to determine what amperage he was suffering. Further, as anyone with basic electrical knowlege knows, Ohm’s Law applies, and Voltage is one of the key factors, as in E=IR (aka V=IR). So voltage has a direct bearing on the subject of lethality, although it’s not a hard-n-fast relationship, but one of related magnitude, in as much as the victim’s resistance is unknown, but that as ‘E’ increases, so must ‘I,’ presuming that ‘R’ remains constant.

    Human resistance is usually presumed to be between 50 and 100 K-Ohms, but I’ve seen it measured as high as 1000 K-Ohms, and as low as 100 Ohms (no, not a joke or type – An electrcian jabbed his leg with a pair of probes, and his resistance went to near zero). Using an ‘R’ value of 100 K-Ohms, and an ‘E’ value of 250VDC, we get a current value of 2.5mA – It shouldn’t have been fatal at that amperage, so I must presume that my sipmate’s resistance was substatially lower for some reason – Sweaty hands, open wounds, poor health, or other causes – any or all could have played a role.

  23. Badlogic says:

    An electric pen to go with his electric tennisball

  24. Bobs says:

    @Hanii Puppy:
    I didnt say anything about amperage, I just assumed that everyone knows that grabbing a live wire from a wall socket or busted extension cord hurts.
    AC feels like ants dancing around, DC causes all the mussles in the aeria to tighten, so if you grab something, you cant let go

  25. RFPT says:

    cough cough…..three…

  26. As for something electrical breaking? In 10th grade, a computer in the AV lab exploded. No one was hurt, but it was hard to explain the smoke coming from the back.

  27. Lou Hannoe says:

    hey wait a minute Chris….

    way (way way) back you said yo got pretty fearless after you third time being shocked at that job, but here you say you were only shocked twice…..

    I just read from the first comic to here in one sitting…

  28. snakpak says:

    A few years ago, when I was in elementary school, my cousin got his hands on a dead televison set. We decided to “explore” the circuitry with wire cutters. My brother and cousin had un-insulated cutters, mine were insulated.
    So we’re going through, cutting every wire we can find, when my cousin says, “Hey, let’s cut this big fat red one”. When he does so, both him and my little brother get thrown to the ground. Apparently there’s some bigass capacitors deep in the bowels of TVs. I never cut any wire without insulated cutters.

  29. Bellows says:

    I was the sound guy for theater in high school. during musicals we would change the 9 volts in wireless mics every show to be sure they would last the whole performance without dying. we saved all the used ones since they still had current. anyway, for my 18th b-day I took all the leftover batteries and snapped them together and carefully attached a wire at each end. I got the wires to arc from about an inch apart. I had almost 900 9v batteries in that chain

  30. Dustin says:

    Strange…
    Alright, there’s a backstory to this one.
    Everything in my computer room (parents’ house) is connected to one outlet on the ceiling.
    There are like 4 surge protectors. Add to that that the house is 120+ years old.
    With bad wiring.
    So.
    Terrible grounding.
    Anything metal on my desk I’d touch (connected to the computer) would give that cool AC vibrating kind of feeling. Neat.

    Had a few run-ins with disposable camera flashes as well. *Shudders*

  31. Paula says:

    Haha, yeah its the amps that scare me more than the volts.

    I remember high school electronics class, man was that fun.

    Our teacher had a huge Tesla Coil and one day, he brought it out and turned it on. It was fun seeing all my classmates try to touch it and getting shocked. And we even tried to start out by touching it and each other in this big long chain of people holding hands. It was odd, I think only the people who were at the ends got much of a shock.

    Of course then they were all begging to get tasered after that. (My teacher also had a taser.) Its one thing to willingly get a small shock, but I never understood why all the guys wanted to get fried.

    It must be a testosterone thing…

    Oh and the guys in class was also notorious for deliberately blowing up capacitors and other electronic components. They at least wore goggles most of the time… (Lucky thing too, or else one of them might not be able to see very well today.)

  32. Draq says:

    Guys will do anything they deem to be manly to prove their manliness to…well we’re not entirely sure on who we’re proving it to. This includes blowing stuff up, setting things on fire, getting set on fire, being tasered, shot with paintball guns, ect.

  33. Bobs says:

    wanna know whats mean? charging a disposible camera’s flash capacitor, the big thing that looks like a stumpy D battery, desoldering it, charging it, then when holding it by the colored end, yell “think fast!!!” and toss it at someone. you will most likley nolonger be friends with whoever catches it for a few days…

  34. A Person Who Is Too Lazy To Come Up With A Creative Name says:

    Does that pen have a battery? And if so, what does the battery power in the pen?

  35. Fred says:

    @A Person Who Is Too Lazy To Come Up With A Creative Name:
    it seems it is plugged to the wall
    and… it powers… a led blinky?
    my sister has a pen wit a blinky on the end, but it’s battery-powered

  36. nathan says:

    @ Draq:

    I don’t think it’s (usually) about proving masculinity, per se. I think part of it is testing yourself, seeing what you can take. Or perhaps proving to yourself that you can withstand… whatever it is.

    On the other hand, it’s also just cool. Blowing things up? Awesome. Having a weapon used on you without any long-term ill-effects? Awesome.

    And part of it is just sheer masochism.

  37. nathan says:

    Oh, and I forgot: I’ve been shocked a few times. The one I remember best is when I was living with a family in a village in Nicaragua.

    Just to give you an idea of how high class the wiring was: Every couple weeks we went out to hang a wire over the line that led to a neighborhood (or maybe a house? I don’t know) because the electric company would come by and cut it down. Naturally, all the wiring was homemade.

    The light in the house I was staying in was an electrical wire hanging from the ceiling, with a lightbulb socket jimmied on, and a pulb screwed in. I don’t remember the switching mechanism, but a couple times when I tried to turn it off or on I got an exciting little shock.

  38. WarpZone says:

    Oh, I get it now. Shockling bills. Took me a while. That one was kinda subtle by Biff’s standards. 😀

    One time when I was 12, I came in from outside during the summer, and the curtians were drawn soI turned on a lamp. Nothing happened. So I turned the knob two more clicks, and it still wouldn’t turn on. Then I suspected the bulb was burned out, so I reached up to uncrew it and go find a new one.

    Well, like I said, I had just come inside from the bright sun, so I figured the reason I couldn’t see the bulb was because it was just too dark. I squinted and reached further.

    Then my entire body started vibrating very rapidly. It actually felt kinda good for the first second or so. Then the tingle started to get warm and painful, and I realized I was being electrocuted.

    That thought broke the stunned trance I was in and allowed me to yank my finger out of the socket. It came out reflex-fast, and then my fingertip started to hurt as if I had burned it. Funny how that worked, I thought. No other pain than at the point of contact. Interesting! Then I screamed until my mother came running.

  39. AdmiralChaos says:

    back in 9th grade, i shoved a paper clip (attached to an eraser on a pencil) into a wall socket in biology, last day of school. somehow, nobody noticed the audible “thoom” and the bright orange sparks that exploded out of the socket… it wouldnt work twice though 🙁

  40. biggo says:

    There’s a story going around here, I don’t know if it’s a urban legend but it’s funny:
    two men at work on the railroad electric line, early in the morning, nobody around; the younger one is collecting tools from his toolbox and when he looks up he sees the other standing next to the high voltage box, one arm on the box, and shaking like he’s being getting a shock. So the guy takes a hammer, runs to the old pal and hits his arm as hard as he can to detach him from the power source; a broken arm, but a life saved.
    Turns out that the old man was only peeing. 😀

  41. jykcor says:

    hey kiddies!
    dont whiz on the electric pen!
    new game from BLAMMO!
    makers of the LOG!

  42. Torg says:

    I was ten. It was dark. I wanted to plug in my GBA charger, but I couldn’t see the outlet. So I felt around for it with my finger. I found it. Unfortunately, I failed to remove said finger before inserting the plug.

    That sounds like a Biff comic waiting to happen. “Biff realizes that, when plugging something in, he shouldn’t put his finger between the prongs.”

  43. Psymon says:

    @Torg: Biff putting his finger between the prongs is too normal for Biff–knowing Biff, he probably managed to plug his fingers into the outlet once when he was little; although I’m not sure whether that involved Biff-style body modification or not.
    Maybe his tongue–“Biff realizes that electricity doesn’t taste as good as he had hoped”

  44. Mr. Horseradish says:

    let me guess: electric bills?

  45. Rotting Gnarl says:

    Is this the first time Biff’s eyebrow has gone outside the borders of the comic? O___O

  46. Mags says:

    I know the feeling of being electrocuted, kinda. I was like super-young, I was chasing my cat around my room, and when I let him out, I got a serious scar on my finger from touching the doorknob. I kept my door open for quite a while from then on.
    The irony is, I love my room when the door’s closed. Yay for not learning a single thing!

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