About my laptop

[This post has now been proofread, because my original posting was terribly fraught with typos.]

A dumb thing happened to my Sony Vaio laptop on Friday night.

We'd been out to dinner, with a little shopping thrown in, and got home around 8 or so. I settled into the end recliner seat of the sectional, my laptop beside me, and opened it up to turn it on, as I finished reading the paper.

When it had booted, I tried to move it to my lap -- only to meet resistance. The cord seemed caught under the footrest of the recliner. I put the rest down a little ... pulled on the cord a little ... only to have to come free in my hand. And not because it pulled out of the laptop, or had become unplugged -- but because the cord had been cut in half!

All I can figure is, it must have gotten pinched in the joint of the footrest, and snip! There it went.

Slight panic on two fronts: One, the thought that I had only two hours (or so) of computing time on it until it died -- if I couldn't replace the cord quickly (like, Saturday), I was delegated to my old Dell; and two, how did I escape being electrocuted on my own La-Z-Boy?

I guess, thanks to the elements of 1) grounding, and 2) sitting on foam, not metal, I was saved from a shock.

Also, thank goodness I had spend the previous week whipping the old Dell laptop into computing shape, or I would have been out of luck. The old girl had needed her hard drive repartitioned, thanks to a boot error, and Windows XP reinstalled, and a couple service packs installed, and then a bunch of programs installed, oh, and a new Belkin wireless card, because the old Linksys finally bit the dust, thank goodness -- it was always a little unstable, and she needed set up on the home network and the printer installed.

Knowing I had a backup, I spent some of the last few minutes on the Vaio looking for a new cord, and experiencing sticker shock of the computer kind when I discovered that a new Sony replacement cord, at Best Buy, would be $90! Plus, it could not be picked up at the store -- one had to order it, and pay shipping.

A visit to eBay assuaged my shock a bit -- I found an acceptable replacement, with shipping, for about $33. Guaranteed, too, with a 99.8% satisfaction rating for the seller. I'll take it! (Except it's coming from California, probably by the Wells Fargo Wagon.)

I won't soon get over the shock of pulling on that cord, and having it come free in my hand; but that's better than the shock of 120V on my butt.

How about you? Anything shocking this weekend?