Fun story: Back in the early days of hobby computing a friend-of-a-friend, a guy called Jim ran a robotics gig in Amsterdam. He asked me to control a head on a stalk with the face of a politician on it lip-synched to some audio. Jaw movement, eyes rolling side to side, some facial animation. Very funny job. Anyway, one night I was working on the 'head' with the latex part off, you have to imagine a very scary looking appliance with teeth and two eyes painted (very realistically) on ping-pong balls behind a skull like frame of fibreglass.

I was writing some code deeply concentrated when my refrigerator decided to generate some really ugly spark causing the servos on the head to become activated, the jaw opened really wide and the eyes rotated to face me, which totally scared the shit out of me.

So much for me being level headed and cool under pressure ;)