Smoke is the key to all things

[ktmossman]

Reminds me of Honduras in the early '90s...  We had a local electrician (being very generous with the term) who did all of the building wiring.  I was observing his work one day as I was supposed to install many $$$$$ in computer equipment and was very nervous about the electrical infrastructure.  Among the many troubling things I noticed was that all of the strands of wire were the same color (black) and he was just merrily attaching them to switches, plugs, breakers, etc. without a test device of any kind in sight.  I asked him how he knew it was all wired correctly.  After getting slightly offended at my (amateur) insinuation that there was a correct/incorrect way to wire things, he replied that his testing method was "smoke testing."  In his own words, "You turn it on.  If it smokes, something ain't right."  Whereupon, I bought my own testing equipment and rewired every circuit that was supposed to have computer equipment on it.  Made me feel really good about using the "suicide shower."