when is the last time you had a electronic catastrophic failure in your home?

[calexanian]

Nothing at home recently, but at work we had a prototype we were working on and had stuck a 9 volt battery on it so we could power it up without an external power supply (12VAC) everything on the board logic and display wise ran at 3.3V so everything was happy.. Until..... One of the other guys forgot to unplug the battery and pluged in the power supply putting 12VAC across a 9 volt lithium battery... Flames shot out.... He tossed the flaming wreckage of a battery still attached to the board off his desk and out into the carpeted hallway. The bosses office is at the end of said hall and his chair is right there in LOS, so all he saw was this flaming board being tossed out an office door! Then it got tossed out into the parking lot, still ablaze! The shop and a unique (toxic) smell for a little while after that. There is a scorched swoosh about 6 inches long on the hallway floor where the "Flamethrower" landed. Excitement! Obviously that was not a failure in the traditional sense of product failure, but it was still pretty catastrophic!