Lights Camera Action
Back when SETI@home was a new thing film crews from various agencies would come and document us in some form or another. At the peak this happened a few times a week. Usually it was one local news reporter and one camera person. They'd make me act out several mundane duties for B-roll, like inserting a DLT tape into a drive, or staring intensely at graphs on my monitor. On a couple occasions it was a Hollywood level film crew. One such production included a catering table full of donuts and coffee for the 20 or so people bouncing around the lab. They had steady cams and rails laid out for sliding shots and all kinds of other similar silliness. They were such professionals that they made us sign releases.. which they then left behind on my desk.
The attention was nice but I got over the process pretty quick. It was always terribly disruptive and I had work to do. When yet another interviewer appeared with a pair of videographers in tow I made myself scarce, sitting elsewhere in the lab for a couple hours.
Upon returning I found the server closet (across the hall from our lab) was left with its doors wide open. Clearly they were still around, and had been taking shots of our racks teeming with exciting nerdy gear. Who isn't fascinated by all their glittering lights and deafening fans? But as I walked past I couldn't help but perceive a chorus of beeping sounds barely above the jet engine noise floor, in tandem with several red lights flashing on the faces of my servers. Uh oh!
I jumped behind the racks and quickly deduced that power supplies have failed on multiple systems, but why? At first I feared the doors being left open meant the air conditioner wasn't as effective and everything was overheating. Then I noticed the foreign extension cable plugged into one of my outlets. I followed the cable back out into the hall. Oh. Those video motherfuckers plugged several 500 watt bulbs into my circuits without asking or thinking, thus blowing a breaker.
I was livid. I stormed into my lab and requested they remove those lights immediately. I made them feel pretty bad about it, even though nothing terrible happened - those machines all had redundant power supplies on separate breakers. But still!