crane toppled over and crashed That reminds me of a shipping story ... I swear it's a true story because I heard it from the technician who was there. He related it to me in the early 1970s -- it probably happened early to mid 1960s. He was in Japan to install a hardware upgrade to a mainframe computer -- an additional tape drive controller. In those days, it would have been an object as large as 2 refrigerators. As the shipment arrived, he waited at the airport with a translator to accept delivery after the 100% import duty was paid. He knew from prior shipments this should take little more than 30 minutes. The clock ticked away and the time stretched out to over 2 hours. Several times the translator spoke with the customs official ... but still wouldn't tell him anything. Whenever the technician asked what was happening he was told to wait. Eventually he insisted on hearing an explanation of the delay. A forklift had rammed through the controller -- totally destroying it. The tech wasn't worried, "Send it back, ship another and let the insurance company sort it all out. He was told that couldn't be done because the import duty had been paid before the accident happened. They considered shipping a replacement backplane (somewhat equivalent to a PC motherboard, but much larger, with thousands wires to make all of the necessary circuit connections). such a replacement backplane would have been considered to be the entire unit by customs, and another 100% import duty would be charged. He stayed in Japan 9 months to build that replacement backplane one wire at a time using a wirewrap tool ... many thousands of wires ... no errors allowed. MGD