Smokin'

This morning when I got to work, I didn't have much to do. So I decided I was going to get all my stuff off of my hard drive and put it on the network. You know, do the responsible thing. I've never had a computer die on me, I've never lost any files because they were on a computer that died. But it had been piling up, so I decided I ought to get them off of my computer, be a good little computer user.

So I was working on that and then it was time for devotions. After I came back from devotions, my computer was off. Odd, I thought, since it had been on when I left. I tried the power button. Nothing. I got under the desk and unplugged it and plugged it back in. Nothing. So I unplugged it and plugged it in to a different outlet, thinking that was maybe the problem.

My cube-mate (we're running out of space) says "woah. smoke." I looked up to see smoke coming out of the computer. Not little wispy stuff. We're talking full-on, hope the sprinkler system doesn't kick in dirty gray smoke pouring from the vents on the top of the computer. I hastily unplugged it and tried to dissipate the smoke by waving my hand over the opening.

Well, the computer was fried. They couldn't even swap out the hard drive into another machine so I could get my data. It was all gone. Done for. The guy who came and took it from my desk asked me what I had done. I told him the story, then told him about how Dell had been pushing the little tiny computers on my boss at the last place and after a few test machines overheated, he had said no thanks and gone back to the larger sized machines. The guy looked pretty panic-stricken and said that he had just deployed 200 of them across the campus.

I guess my area won't be the last place to smell of acrid smoke for days to come.