Not the kind of surprise I was really looking for, but thanks
So… two things. As of today I’ve got a few days off, for the first time in a year that didn’t involve anyone dying. After the past two weeks at work, I can safely predict that someone would’ve been dying if I hadn’t gotten a few days off. Even the expanded-hours training schedule we’ve been on lately was truncated today, so I got to go home today after – get this! – only eight hours.
And then the fun really began. I get home and bring my two desktop machines out of standby, and my older machine – a Dell Dimension I’ve had since ’05 that has served faithfully even though I sometimes think the best thing for it would be a reformat of the ol’ C drive and a solid kick right between the registry – sounded like it was gonna freakin’ take off. The fan keeps getting louder… and the pitch of this loud whine it’s making keeps rising… and I had a bit of a flashback.
So I did now what I did then: pulled the plug out of the back.
Bad move. When I waited a couple of minutes and reconnected the power cord to the power supply, the thing stayed asleep when I tried to wake it up.
Let’s pause for a moment and see what all this machine does that I don’t/can’t do on any other machines in the house:
- My entire DVD-burning capacity is tied up in this machine.
- This machine plays cartoons out to a TV (hooked up as a secondary monitor) for Evan.
- This machine has my entire music/audio collection on it, and the vast majority of my digital video files (all Doctor Who and Star Trek, and spinoffs thereof, reside on the F drive on this machine).
- This machine has the master DVD ISO files, and all of the master video files, for all of my DVD productions to date.
- This machine has my (half-dozen or so) books-in-progress on it.
- This machine is my LAN hub.
- This machine has all of my photos of my son on it.
Okay, I think you get it: double-plus-non-good. Fortunately, after about half an hour of trying to call friends in the know, I tried to power the Dell up again… and this time, it woke up.
I think the plan is to keep it awake until further notice, giving me a little bit of time to buy a new power supply, without it being an ohshitgottagetanewonenow thing. But I’m under no illusion that it’ll stay awake forever waiting for me to finish that search at a leisurely pace.
This has not been my year for power supplies.… Read more
