Burn Baby Burn

I haven’t had much time to post over the past few days mainly because the power adapter on my Apple Powerbook caught on fire and my computer is out of service until I get another one.

On Saturday evening, Nick had gone to bed and I thought : ‘Oooh, might be time to do a blog post.’ I opened my laptop and there was a ZAP followed by smoke and a few sparks. I quickly unplugged everything but my adapter continued to smoulder and eventually caught fire.

I realised then that I am ill-equipped for dealing with a fire in the house. I don’t have a fire extinguisher or even a fire blanket. I knew you don’t throw water on electrical fires so I put the flaming power cord into an empty bucket and tossed the whole thing out onto the grass in the garden, then began to throw clods of earth on it. I must have looked like a madwoman.

You should have seen the guy’s face in the Apple store when I brought my singed, earth-encrusted adapter in to get a replacement. Well, it wasn’t too earth-encrusted, but part of the casing had been melted slightly by the heat.

He started a big hoo haa about how the warranty may not be honoured under such circumstances; whereupon I went into a big tirade about how the Minister for Fair Trading might not like to hear of someone selling faulty goods which may have actually caused damage to life and limb, who was not prepared to honour the terms of their warranty. And yes, I hate to admit it, but the F word was used – several times in fact. I went all Gordon Ramsay on his ass.

What bothered me the most about the entire incident was that the Apple guy said the adapter went on fire because I probably wasn’t using it properly.

Ah, erm, it’s a plug, mate. You plug one end into the computer and the other into the wall. What could I possibly be doing wrong?

Mr. Apple claimed such a thing had never happened before. Funny then that when I went round to the service centre there were two other people there with the same problem as me. One woman had just bought her adapter two weeks before. Seems that we were all lacking in the ability to plug things in department.

I am posting this on my son’s PC. I’m not used to Windows. Everything’s all back to front. It’s like typing while hanging upside down. I will get my new adapter in 3 days. Until then I won’t know if my hard drive is still intact. I will also be slightly nervous in case there are any further fires. Think I’ll boot up with a clod of earth in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other.