Fun With Fire Trucks!

There was an odd electrical smell coming from our computer room. You know, that kind of hot sickeningly sweet smell that comes from electronics when they overheat. After about 20 minutes of sniffing and feeling all the walls we decided that we needed some expert advice. I called the non-emergency number for our local fire department and asked a few questions about what we should do. I was concerned that there might be a fee for non-emergency house calls. The nice operator informed me that there was no fee for sending a company out to check the house. So at 10:30pm we decided to invite 10 fully equipped firemen, driving two very large firetrucks over for a visit.

I'm still not sure why so many fireman were needed for the very simple task of scanning one small room. However, if there had been even the tiniest little spark they would have been ready to pounce. For those of you that have been to my house, try to imagine 10 fully geared firemen in my living room, hallway and office. It was a very funny and cramped site to see.

The very well prepared men did a thermal scan of the office, Jacob's room and the hallway ... they found nothing.

Hmmmmmmmmm?

While Jacob was entertaining several of the firemen in the living room with his wonderful WII skills, I was informed to plug everything back in and continue with life as normal. In the event that the smell returned I was supposed to call the fire department again and they would come back out to try to figure out the cause. So ... after testing all the fire alarms in the house, we plugged everything back in and resumed normal activities. Jacob was with Nana and Steve and I began playing one of our network PC games. He uses the laptop and I use the desktop PC ... it is totally dorky and it makes us happy.

The smell seemed to be lingering in the air very heavily. I thought that it was just residual from earlier so I went to open the office window. As I leaned over the desk reaching for the window I heard Steve say "Woh your screen just went jiggy." Yes he did say jiggy. Just as he said that, a very loud electrical buzzing noise started coming from our center CRT monitor (tube monitor not a flat screen). It sounded just like when a transformer is about to blow and it was getting louder. Steve immediately started yelling "shut it off" as he dove under the desk to unplug everything again. Thankfully we managed to get everything shut down before the monitor exploded. I was really not in the mood to have monitor pieces embedded in my mid section. I was grateful to Steve for acting so quickly.

After we took the dead monitor outback Steve began to test all the other components checking for damage. For a split second when we tried to restart the tower I almost went crazy with fear. It was not responding. No lights, no beeps -- NOTHING. The fear that I had just lost all of my work was almost to much to bear. I did my best to keep calm. I have been married to Steve long enough to know that I need to wait about 10 minutes before I start to freak out. That usually gives him enough time to determine if a full fledged freak out by me is necessary. Being the great computer guy that he is - he started with the first obvious test, if there is no power then check the power supply. There were two casualties - the monitor and the power supply on the PC. The power surge caused by the monitor fried the power supply inside our tower. Luckily that was the only thing it damaged, all of our files where intact. YAY!!!

We shut everything down and let the computer rest. It had gone through a lot, the lose of a component and a horrible scare of being totally fried. We knew it needed some down time to recover.

We have replaced the monitor and power supply and are back in full working order. We have also added a battery backup with surge protector to help prevent things like this in the future. Personally I have begun the task of making backup discs of everything. Steve is going to install an external hard drive for me that will update itself every night as a safety measure. That will be very nice. Jacob was not as impressed with the fire trucks as I thought he would be. He was more interested in telling all the firemen about his WII games. He is definitely our child.

Well that was our fun with firetrucks! By the way, just an observation ... I think it is mandatory that all firemen were first GQ models before getting the job. I'm just sayin ... it probably helps them sell calendars. :)