In Which There Was a Little Puff of Smoke

Early last week, maybe Tuesday, I had a problem. With my laptop. Again. You might remember when I had some issues a while back with my charger cord and it went on and on and finally had to be replaced. Gotta love Toshiba, but I digress. Things have been all right since the new cord arrived. Well, excepting of course a couple of weeks ago when my computer just slowed all way down and then got really bizarre, opening windows all the time (that I was not trying to open at all, for the record) and it just kind of freaked out. Sure computers can freak out--why not? So poor Brian was working and working on it and finally, it was a-ok.

Whew. What a relief. Thank goodness I didn't have to get a new one or anything. Just about a week to a week-and-a-half and I was in business. Pause for a moment to stop grinding teeth. And then, seeing as I was so happy and all...

You knew something bad had to happen, right?

I was on my laptop and something happened. First my cord (newly replaced, mind you) looked like this:



Well, mostly like that. There is a tiny green light on the charger thingy and that light was on.

Then Spencer ran by, as he often does, and runs over the cords, instead of going around the table. Big surprise, right? Those of you with kids are completely perplexed--that NEVER happens at your house, I'm sure. So I hear him kick the box and it annoys me. I'm fairly certain that the reason the first one broke is a direct result of him doing just this type of thing. I look down and expect to see this:



Light out. Cord unplugged.

Nope. I see this:



Light out. Cord still plugged in. Hmmm? Then I hear a tiny sound and see a little puff of smoke. I know, I should have snapped a photo at that exact moment, but I wasn't ready. This is clearly a reenactment for your benefit. I'll admit it, I did have a moment when I considered staging a shot of the cord, with me out of sight shooting steam at the charger with my Rowenta iron, but I thought that might be a little too "Yarn Harlot in the Tub" for me, you see. (Hilarious post, but a tad bit weird with the camera readiness. Later she explained that she had someone grab it for her, but you get the idea.)

I do think you need a visual of some sort, though, so I went with this instead:



Anyhow, it was horrible. Really a bad, bad feeling. I quickly unplugged all the cords, just in case. Then I gagged on the horrid smelling smoke. Next I checked the charger box and it was hot, which sort of freaked me out. A moment after the relief that all was o.k. and there was no longer any risk of fire and such, I realized that I probably had about 60 minutes of juice left on my laptop. And that is it. Luckily, most of what was on there was just backed up, because Brian had to erase the whole laptop in order to fix it last week. But still. The thought of having it die and then having to wait another week or more for a new cord (again) sank my spirits. I let Brian know what happened, and I stayed the heck off the thing to save the battery life. The problem is, without a new cord, anything on there is inaccessible when it's dead and can't be charged up.

Brian, bless his heart, suggested that we really did need a new one. This one's had many problems and it needed a new charger and a new battery, too. Plus, it's on the older side. I hated to do it, but we decided to just go and find something fairly low frills, so this didn't keep happening.

So here's my new laptop.



I really like it, and everything works, which is sort of a novelty for me.



It came with Vista, and I was nervous about that. But I do have to say that I really like how it works and I'm not having any problems with compatibility with older programs, etc. So far so good (watch out for falling tree limbs, sudden sparks, or spontaneously unravelling knitting).

It's lighter. Bigger, clearer screen. Longer battery life. All that good stuff. Gotta love improving technology...



Even the cord is better. Smaller, more compact, and the cords are heavier with three prongs!

Oh, and I forgot to explain the title. I'm seeing that all over the place lately. The whole "In Which....blah, blah, blah" titles. I can't remember who the blogger is who sort of started all of that by always starting her posts with "in which", but if I remember, I'll add a link. But I couldn't resist using the term, because how do you really start a post about a crazy power cord gone postal and smoky and all?