Zap!
So this happened.
Several weeks ago I was dozing in front
of my computer, my beloved 11-year-old
Apple G5 tower, when I heard a loud POP!
come from inside the case, whereupon the
computer went dead as a doornail. A
subsequent autopsy of the power supply
revealed that a chip controlling the
voltage
had exploded, probably due to an electrical
surge.
Well, fuck.
It seemed like an easy fix so I
ordered a new part, which took a couple
of weeks
to arrive
from China,
and got back to business on my back-up
G5. (As a self-employed artiste I'm prepared
for anything... except retirement.)
The new part finally arrived this past
Tuesday and on Wednesday I soldered the
new chip
in place, buttoned everything up, and hit
the power button.
POW!
When my eyes quit watering the repaired power supply
was ominously smoking and my back-up computer had faded
to black! The surge from the repair had managed to
slash through two surge-protected
power strips and killed my back-up computer.
FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK!
(Note: It was a simple repair so it's pretty clear
that some other element of the power supply wasn't
ready to go another ten rounds. I should have suspected
as much. Oh, well.)
So I go to the closet and drag out the back-up-back-up
computer, a semi-new Mac Pro, one I've been cautious
about bringing online as
there would inevitably be a plethora of software
issues to deal with. I plug in all the assorted cables
and the last one, as fate might have it, is the printer
USB cable.
ZAP!
The back-up,
back-up computer has now gone dead, and I instantly
realize that the initial power surge blew my printer's
brains out to the extent that it began shooting live
current
down
the
USB cable, which explains why it actually threw
off sparks
when I tried to connect it to the Mac Pro.
FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCKLEDY-FUCK-FUCKLING-FUCK-FUCKLES!
I proceeded to sit in the corner and weep disconsolately
for a while then I went to the closet one more time
and
pulled
out a
crappy
little
Lenovo netbook
with
a
broken
screen
that
my nephew threatened to trash before I rescued it.
I hooked it up to a spare monitor and got
on Craigslist, very slowly, and almost immediately
found Frankie,
a most groovy, progressive gent living just down the
road from me. He gave me a sweet deal on the G5 I'm
now typing this on.
If you live in Dallas and you ever require the services
of a good
DJ, look him up. He's so peachy I may adopt him.
For the record, I lost two computers, a printer,
a scanner, two power strips, plus an Apple keyboard
and mouse. All because I'm too
smart dumb
for
my own
good.
The
good news, such as it is, is that I can scavenge a
power supply from one of the brain-dead G5s and transplant
into my
original
G5. Meanwhile, I'm on the hunt for another bargain
Mac Pro. I'll join the 21st century some day if it
kills me. Considering my electrical skills, it just
might.
=Lefty=
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