Lara, for thus my iMac is named, had been on and chuntering away merrily for several hours. I'd come offline and was waiting for a document to scan, not touching anything, when suddenly there was a very ominous electrical crackle which would probably be represented in a comic as bzzzt, and everything died.
I tried various combos of plugs in and out of different sockets and switching on and off, but I couldn't get a response out of any of my devices. It looked horribly as though my four-way adaptor, which had been powering my peripherals for years with no problems, had suddenly blown and caused a MASSIVE POWER SURGE, as I believe it's technically known. It seemed probable that I was looking at a toasted iMac, and more than likely a toasted printer, scanner, USB hub, disk drive...
To make everything extra peachy, I've been working the last couple of weeks on a freelance web design project due to launch 'beginning of June'. I was just tweaking the last few files, after which I was going to back up the whole works to floppy.
Fuck. Fuck! Fuck!!
I did the only thing I could think of in the circumstances: poured out some vodka and went off to watch telly.
The drink must have lubricated some part of my brain, as halfway through Six Feet Under I thought of one last thing I could try before accepting that I was now the proud owner of a large lump o' chip jewellery.
I wiggled the power lead.
Booted up and the power button lit up green and I got a bong, which was a hell of a lot more that I'd coaxed out of it for the past half hour. Now, though, a tense wait for the facial expression on my Mac icon.
... ... ... ...
My Mac was a smiley Mac! Praise God! I staggered about the flat for some time breathing 'Happy Mac! Happy Mac!' and, I admit, weeping. I won't begin to think about how in the X-files the lead disconnected itself when I was several feet away from the machine - I was back in action.
Hell of an incentive to back up my files, though.
