In my teenage years, I went fishing aboard a long liner.

I shared my shift with four intimidating Icelandic men. I usually stood by the line, making sure that any fish that were hooked got inside the boat.

During one of my shifts, under heavy storms, an absolutely massive knot came up. I tried to untie it, but ended up having to call for help. The Icelanders went to town on it, but did not make a lot of progress.

In frustration, one of them screamed at me to go get the knot book from the captain. I ran as fast as I could. Up on deck, a huge wave hit, and I almost fell overboard.

Got up to the bridge. Captain just laughed and told me to fuck off.

When I got back, they had untied the knot.

I never lived it down.

We have a lot of these in the military (M203 blank adapter, box of grid squares, chemlight batteries, testing the armor on gun trucks or the shocks on armor like APCs or tanks, etc). But my favorite by far was convincing a FNG to collect a few exhaust samples from the Bradleys. This guy was a friend of mine in the civilian world and a really smart dude, but man he fell hook, line, and sinker for that one. He would climb up there on the vehicle with a trash bag, cover the massive exhaust port, then tell the driver to fire it up. It just blew thick, black engine smoke all over him, covering him in soot. Several times. When he finally managed to get a big cloud of exhaust in the trash bag (with the whole platoon standing around watching), I took it and opened the bag and looked in there and said, "Nah, man, this one's not quite good enough, gotta get another one"... Finally he ended up walking across the whole formation to the motor sergeant with this giant transparent trash bag full of engine exhaust, covered head to toe in black gunk, totally proud that he finally got a good sample.

When it releases the magic smoke, it means it's burnt through its supply of GPU fluid.

I hear you can get that at auto parts stores. It's right next to the blinker fluid.

I can see how you might think you have a virus, with that strange message box and those encrypted files, but you actually have a problem with your GPU.

We tested if the reservoir of GPU fluid is low, but after we put the transistors on the megahertz scale it's pretty clear that your monitor won't ever go into X mode. It's completely out of sync. The only thing left is to update the source codes, or you'll never boot again.

When the apprentice has nothing else to do, send him buy some gpu fluid.

Off-topic, but I used to work at Domino's and the running gag for new hires was to yell at them to get the "dough repair kit" from the back in the middle of the Friday evening rush.

If you have a liquid cooled GPU then GPU Fluid is a real thing...

That's exactly what I thought this item would be about before I clicked it.

Just make sure they check if the GPU fan spins left or right - right-handed GPU fluid will make the spurving bearings in a left-handed GPU sieze up real quick.