Re: [NTLK] [OT] It's MS-DOS 6.22 day!

~~~ On 2009/09/08 16:43, Josef Chessor at josefcub@gmail.com wrote ~~~

>
> I actually speak from experience. A long time ago, my 286 was struck
> by lightning. It sort of survived, but spat out gibberish like that
> mail burp instead of useful things like my DOS prompt. This taught
> the young me the value of surge suppressors or (even better)
> unplugging during thunderstorms. :)
>
> Josef

Josef,

I also was speaking from experience. It was 1991, I was in a foreign
country trying to get a presentation ready for the following morning, and my
laptop was plugged in while I worked feverishly into the night. There was a
thunderstorm (the locals claimed it was rare for them) and the power station
-- a relay station or something, IIRC, was hit by lightning (this too was
rare, indeed, well-nigh impossible, or so they claimed), and as the
lightning outside flashed, three other things happened. First, there was a
loud bang as my laptop's power brick lit up a bright green and the magic
smoke leaked out; second, the area in which the apartment I was staying went
black as power was cut and stayed cut for an indeterminate but long period;
and third, the laptop screen started feeding me gibberish instead of my Word
5.5 for DOS document.

Yes, I finished the presentation: the old fashioned way, with my trusty
Parker pen and a pad, by candlelight. As soon as I got back home I did some
furious data recovery, and went laptop hunting.

And now I unplug, too.

 
Shalom.
Christian

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

³Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.²
            -- what Arthur C. Clarke meant

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/3942

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Received on Tue Sep 8 17:16:39 2009