The Clumsinator strikes again
Her royal clumsiness really did it yesterday. I stretched out my leg while working at the computer, and in all the copious space underneath my desk, my toe managed to find the one square inch area that is the on/off switch to the power block that my computer was plugged into, abruptly switching off the power and causing my computer to come to a grinding halt. I’ve done this once or twice before and the machine’s been just fine. But not this time. It’s totally dead, and I’m not sure how long it will be before I can either get it fixed or get a new one. Luckily I have the laptop from my work home with me this weekend, so I’ve at least been able to check my mail.
Things will probably be quiet here until I get my main machine up and running again, and my ability to answer email will be even more limited than usual.
LL
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Hi Lori,
leaving the power block underneath the desk is - as you might have experienced - a dangerous thing; hope you did not loose any important data. Based on similar experience I can only advise to remove any type of switches from the area your feet might be able to target - this can save quite some trouble.
Another thing: is there any particular reason for changing the blog? You last entry with the old blog suggest you ran into some limitations - any details on this (maybe something to keep in mind when looking for a platform)?
Cheers,
Lars
Hi Lars,
I know, the power block incident was STUPID STUPID STUPID. It was pushed way back against the wall, but my toe still managed to find it. When I get the compuer up and running again I’ll be sure to arrange my workspace so that this can’t happen again.
About the blog stuff — Blogger can be slow as molasses sometimes, and the interface limits what you can do with your blog. And the idea of having my stuff hosted on somebody else’s domain just kind of creeps me out (I like CONTROL). I looked into a few blogging platforms, and Wordpress totally won me over. Easy to install, good support available on the forums, good documentation, lots of great plugins, and thousands of themes (styles/templates) to choose from to get you started.
Cheers,
LL
Hmm well lucky me I never did that so far with mine.. although I guess that’s mostly because some big ass adapters for my external harddrive and speakers are in the way. Hope your pc will turn out fine again soon!
An easy way to stop this annoying thing, is by using some mouse-trap or so… I’ll bet you will NEVER push the power switch again. A sorry, I’m just kiddin’
I hope your computer will be okay soon, because I can’t wait for another interesting story… Keep blogging
Greetz,
Rob
*Just installed the RSS-feeds in my Google Personalized — works amazingly well!*
The guy in the shop said he thought the power supply was the problem, and that I could probably replace it and the PC would be OK. But I decided to upgrade anyway (they had a really great deal). So now I’ve got twice the RAM (and it’s faster) and a much faster processor than before. And a better SOUNDCARD, which will come in very handy over the next few weeks. I’m testdriving it tonight, and it seems to work really well!
I have removed all important objects from anywhere within reach of my naughty toe - no mousetraps needed!
Glad the feeds are working for you, Robbo. RSS freakin’ rules.
Hey Lori,
1 word : TIE WRAPS. Oh, that’s two words. Well, anyway … Strap the powerblock to the side of your table. I’ve got mine on top of the table, a) for easy access because it’s no fun having to crawl underneath the table to attach/detach tuners, keyboards, the Pod, mobile phone chargers etc …
But, to make you feel better, here’s a little story from my archive which, of course, is a true story or at least based upon it.
In 1989, I was a support engineer. I got a call from an employee claiming his PC shut down every 15 minutes or so. I took his PC in, examined everything, had it running for a full day and nothing happened. So, I took the PC back, he installed it and called me 10 minutes later. “The PC’s done it again”. So I went over to his desk and told him to work and I would watch carefully to see what he was doing. In another 5 minutes, the screen went blank. He was crossing his legs and then swinging the top leg, causing his foot to hit the powerbutton every once in a while. I told him I had an inkling about the cause and a possible solution. I got under his desk and moved his PC back about 15 cm. When he asked me why he did this I answered: “I think your PC is sitting on top of a light fixture from the floor below. This is emanating electrical currents and it shortcircuits your PC. Moving it back 15 cm will make it less prone to shortcircuits”. The guy made me king of the world, until he found out what really happened a day later …
Hahhaa, Love the story, Kristof! I sooo have done the big-toe-on-the-button thing, more times that I’d like to admit.
The tie wraps is a great idea, thanks! All I have here at home is wussy little ones, but I’ll get some big manly ones next time I’m in town. For now I’ve got the machine plugged directly into the wall, because my toe can’t be trusted.
[...] That’s how I’m going to introduce myself from now on. In the past year I’ve killed or (seriously maimed) no fewer than 4 computers. Regular readers may remember my earlier account about killing my most recent desktop computer with my mighty metal toe. That was only the beginning. The other day at work, right in front of a bunch of clients, I switched on the super-ninja wide-screen hi-fi laptop, and the somehow my computer-toxic destruct-o-matic thought rays of doom caused a malfunction: smoke billowed from the laptop’s AC adapter jack, whereupon it whimpered in protest, sputtered and died in a final puff of burned-out-circuit stench. (Killing yet another computer was pretty bad, but the realization that I’d be without my precious Google for the next 4 hours was actually worse.) [...]