Oh horrors

[pebblerocker]

Last night there was a thunderstorm so I shut down the computer and turned all the gear off at the wall. Today when I switched it back on at the socket there was a loud pop and a flash from the area of the power supply. Half the power points in the house stopped working. That put me into a bit of a panic, I can tell you! But after resetting the circuit breakers everything seems fine: computer goes, music and TV equipment still working, no expensive circuit boards fried in the washing machine. Whew.

Backup time for saved games and my drawing scans folder, though.

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I've screwed up my desktop computer. Not sure what happened, I was in the middle of word processing and it froze up. I rebooted and now it won't even POST (i.e. where it goes beep and gives you the option to enter the BIOS). So it's either the motherboard or the CPU that's fried itself, one of the two most expensive components.

[pebblerocker]

No beep? That sounds serious! An excuse to upgrade the faulty component, perhaps?

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Pff, yes. If I can figure out which one it is. I think I have to take it apart and see which one has charred melty bits.

I know it's not the power supply, because there is power to some things in there -- the lights and fans all come on when I power it up. It just never gets to the beep.

[dr-sponge.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never think about doing stuff like that. Then again, I always turn off my computer at the wall when I'm not using it.

I was driving in the car with my mum and we saw fork lightning, and I'm like "there, did you see it now?" (she doesn't believe it really exists, and certainly not in NZ - lightning is just a flash), and she's was like "no". Sigh.

[pebblerocker]

I generally remember to turn mine off at the wall when I've finished, but it doesn't usually explode when I switch it back on. And I always unplug the washing machine when there's a thunderstorm because of previous experience with a machine's innards being zapped by a surge.

I'm not sure if my memory of seeing fork lightning is real or if it was implanted by TV. Last night we were seeing the sky light up but most of the flashes were over the horizon.