Ron Craig works in tech support for a student educational center. When he first started at the center he heard rumors from other techies who told him that the center's teachers were technology challenged. He didn't really give this much thought this until the day he received one particular tech call that changed his mind.
It was the beginning of the school year, and the teachers were setting up their classes when Ron received a frantic call from one of the teachers. He reported that one of their computers was stone dead without a flicker of life anywhere. This could be something ridiculously simple (forgot to plug in the power cord) or very serious (power supply meltdown, frying everything in the box.) There was no way to tell over the phone.
As Ron prepared to go investigate, he noticed some of the more experienced tech support staff grinning and elbowing each other. "It's a jungle out there, good luck," teased one of his coworkers.
When Ron got to the resource room he checked the teacher's workstation, the computer, the monitor and the printer. It was often the simple things that seemed to stump the users, but this time it seemed everything was properly plugged into the power bar. Could there have been an isolated surge that killed everything right here but nowhere else? That seemed unlikely. Ron was puzzled and stood there for a minute trying to decide his next move.
Just by chance, he decided to take a closer look at the power bar. It seemed intact. The surge-protection fuse was ok. The power bar itself was plugged in. However, there was one slight problem: the power bar was plugged into itself!
When Ron got back to his desk his coworkers began teasing him and asking details about the call. Ron didn't want to give them the pleasure of being right so he simply said, "Actually, it was a complicated networking issue, but the teacher learned his lesson."
