... because I blew up the malfunctioning hard drive. Literally. I powered on Curmudgeon's PC, there was a spark, smoke came out of the vicinity of the spark and then all was silent. After I powered the PC down I took the offending, smoke-emitting drive from the chassis and found molten slag on top of an IC. The slag was still smoldering. ( Read more... )

Ultimately it wasn't just my flight that got canned! It was all flights to Chicago that got canceled, along with a number of flights to other destinations. Once I was sure that I was screwed out of my flight options with United I called my Corporate Travel Monkey's emergency line to get something rolling and see if I could get out on another ( Read more... )

I'm at gate C9 in La Guardia Airport and for the foreseeable future I'm not going anywhere. My flight, which was running late already, has been diverted from LGA to PIT. According to the overhead announcement the plane hasn't even touched down yet at PIT -- but once it has there will be some sort of an updated announcement. Apparently there is ( Read more... )

As jwz would say, "Welcome to our grim meathook future."

Video courtesy of markvd. Let it get halfway through and the boring tennis crap will stop -- that's when it gets innaresting. See what it's holding in the second half? Now it just needs wheels and a chainsaw and... oh hell, we might as well just stencil "T-1" on it in honor of the first ( Read more... )