(no subject)

[arethinn]

Hai guys! Guess where I'm posting from?

My computer that appears to have survived the flash fire without losing the magic smoke -- though you wouldn't have guessed that from the ventilation we had to do of the room -- although the optical drive did not pull through. (Actually, visually it looks fine internally in terms of its control board and even the SATA cable, it's just that the power connector is a stinky melted mess, so basically the thing is toast even if the circuitry is fine. Dust may or may not have been directly burned in the event, since plastic clearly burned enough to produce the observed effects. Still, it seems the failure was contained fairly well.)

And also, my computer that was gently named Starlight and now seems to require a more badass name. I'm not sure I want to name it anything to directly connected with fire, at least not in the present tense; I wouldn't wish to encourage a repeat! (And silliness like Gandalf the White is right out. Shadow and flame... passed through fire and death... bandy crooked words with a witless worm... blah blah blah) Given the soot that was on the inside of the top of the case and on the outer case of the optical drive, Ancalagon presents itself as a possibility; ill-omened, perhaps, but then enotsola's computer is named The Valeyard, sooo...

I don't really have an icon that adequately expresses my gratitude and relief that this turned out to be the case, so have ZOMG. And perhaps this oldie from the Internet Book of Shadows:

Blessings on this fine machine,
May its data all be clean.
Let the files stay where they're put,
Away from disk drives keep all soot.
From its screen shall come no whines,
Let in no spikes on power lines.
As oaks were sacred to the Druids,
Let not the keyboard suffer fluids.
Disk Full shall be nor more than rarity,
The memory shall not miss its parity.
From the modem shall come wonders,
Without line noise making blunders.
May it never catch a virus,
And all its software stay desirous.
Oh let the printer never jam,
And turn my output into spam.
I ask of Eris, noble queen,
Keep Murphy far from this machine.

Zhahai Stewart 1988

Comments

[digitalsidhe]

Glad to hear your machine's still in working condition!

If I hadn't seen the date on the end of that poem, I'd still have known it was pretty ancient, just from the mention of "modem". I think the current generation may have come of age in a time where modems were already obsolete. (I know I haven't needed one since about 1999, when I got my first DSL connection. So that was 18 years ago... someone could be graduating college and not have any memory of modems, at least.)

[arethinn]

1999. Wow. Eff you, San Francisco. We didn't get DSL at this house until 2009 (and struggled through four people sharing modems on two phone lines for nine months after enotsola moved here), although granted that was unusually late compared to other local cities. We just had the ill fortune of being situated too far from our phone central office.

Oh, and you might get a kick out of this: the computer's new name is Andúril.

[digitalsidhe]

Re-forged! From the Shards of Narsil! I like it.

[arethinn]

And also, of course, the Flame of the West :)

eta: Umm, well, this is odd:



It doesn't seem to be agreeing with itself about what its name is. It's been restarted twice since I made the name change. Maybe it's trying to hang on to "starlight" since Narsil refers to Sun and Moon :P I guess it just has two names now.

[digitalsidhe]

Weird. I dunno why the name won't finish changing.

I may have missed the "Flame of the west" aspect partly because, I thought you said you were looking to avoid new names that had to do with fire?

[andros_b]

Weird. But I've had to deal with Windows 10 weirdnesses before. Also, awesome name, and I'm glad it pulled through! Though I'd check your power supply; it might have overloaded and caused the fire.

[arethinn]

We switched power supplies. We happened to have another of the same wattage on hand. (eta: which has been enough since built almost 5 years ago, if that's what you were getting at vs. a sudden failure of some kind; I didn't recently add anything that would have required more juice or anything like that.)

[andros_b]

My money was on "sudden failure", TBH. Capacitors fail on old power supplies a lot, and that causes issues.

[coyotegoth]

"Phoenix"?

[arethinn]

Heh, was about the first thing I discarded as too on the nose (and also not something that seemed to appeal either to me or to the machine).

[kllara]

I'm glad things turned out okay in the end!