… and it happened this morning! I was working on an invoice for a customer when the Excel file started to act up and then went ‘hang’. Then, I smelled something burning, something that smelled like plastic burning. The mil who was having breakfast also twitched her nose. Then the both of us looked at each other and we sprang out from our seats to quickly hunt for the source of the burnt smell. Nothing fishy in the rooms and elsewhere and I went back to my work place. Dang it, the smell was very strong there! When I looked under the computer table, lo and behold, I saw smoke!
The Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) switch that housed a bunch of wires from the computer was burning inside! I quickly turned off the main switch (dang it that I lost some unsaved dox!) and unplugged the AVR switch. I could not believe my series of jinx, one after another… from my car being hit by a stupid Beemer for no reason just 2 days ago to having my ‘rice bowl’ burnt today! Great!
Thank goodness I have a spare PC in the girls’ room but shiats, the dox were all saved in the hard disk of my existing PC and I could not turn it on to retrieve the dox. So it made no difference, I still could not work!
With my brain processing at speed of lightning to find a solution, I finally got a light bulb moment! After carefully examining both the AVRs (the one that got burnt and the one in the girls’ room), I unplugged the AVR at the girls’ room and transferred it to my computer.
I have always been intimidated by anything that has a huge bunch of wires attached to it and never bothered to find out how these things are assembled or attached. I never needed to know anyway as I always have people doing it for me. Back in my corporate days, we had IT guys to come over to help us out at the touch of the phone. I was working in the HR Dept. of a bank and the IT guys would always zoom to us during SOS moments like speedy gonzales, in the hope of getting good feedback on their performances. And when I was the PA to the boss of the company, a dial on the phone for IT help would send staff speeding to my room *ahem, clears throat*
Back home now, the hubs would always help me or he would get the computer guy to come over to help. So, I am a total idiot when it comes to computer wires and hardware as I have always been spoon-fed. But today, I was forced to clean up shit myself. After studying the AVRs and the dust-coated wires attached to them, I figured that it is just SO easy to unplug the bunch of confusion. But first, I had to use some wet wipes to clean the wires that had inch-thick dust, that were never wiped before. Within half an hour, I got my PC up and about again. And thankfully, the computer guy could come today to get me a new AVR and a new D-Link for the girls’ PC. So issue settled by 12:30pm and I was RM120 poorer!
Lesson learnt :
1) Must turn off computer and turn off main switch to the computer at night before going to bed. Thank God the AVR got burnt during the day and not at night when we are all fast asleep!
2) Always take heed of unusual sounds emitted from switches and computer hardware. For the past few months, the AVR had been letting out a strange ‘tick tick tick’ sound and I just brushed it off. It was indeed a time bomb, waiting to explode!
I hope that ends my series of jinx, with one that is quite explosive today!
No. of times viewed = 664