Out of Pod Experience

As it turns out, having good D-scanning skills can be very practical in real life as well as in Eve.
Allow me to elaborate.

Two weeks ago, I was part of a specialist team sent from our EU HQ to a customer site in Beijing to solve a particularly nasty problem on one of our big electromechanical installations (can't be too particular, as having a job is a nice thing).
Upon arrival, we performed many tests, one of which included checking the actual output of some of the machine's infrared transcievers (as opposed to what the IT-guys said they put out).
This installation is rather big - Around 60 by 80 meters and two stories tall, and with electronics being my little niche, I got the wonderful job of diving into the machine and walking/climbing around to each little transciever with my own, portable IR-reciever.

Most of the transcievers put out expected values, but in a few locations, my IR-reciever went a little nuts.
To begin with, I thought the transcievers were simply broken or placed near a source of electromagnetic interference causing them to emit random IR trash, but then I found out that the strange readings I was receiving didn't come from the transcievers. Rather, they came from another source - Either some equipment or something completely different. I just couldn't tell where, since IR light is invisible to normal people (I'm sure some unique snowflake out there can see IR).
So, at this point, I had to scan down the light source.
Fortunately, living in WH space has taught me how to D-scan, and so I spent the next hour or so moving around to different locations to try to pick up the direction of the emitter.
Eventually, I found two visual detection arrays which had been equipped with an IR camera and IR projectors as an experiment. We normally use visual light for this task.
Despite their relatively big size, I hadn't suspected them, because I had been told that they were turned off, which would explain why I saw no light from them.
It turned out that they weren't off at all, just in stand by, and the IR-projectors were on at full power :-D
They were just so powerful that reflections and narrow beams of IR would find their way deep into the machine and trigger my receiver.

Bottom line is, gaming, and in particular D-scanning in Eve, is not a complete waste of time.
If you're not already proficient in D-scanning, you should get started. You never know when you need to pinpoint the location of an IR-projector inside a major installation.