Remember how I wrote recently of how dry my office is? Something happened today I’d never seen before. I returned from getting a cup of coffee and forgot to ground myself before touching my computer.
Zap! A surge of static electricity traveled from my hand into my laptop. Whenever this occurs, Windows reports it as the USB ports overloading, so I expected the barrage of Windows pop-ups but it was even worse than this.
First, I noticed Bill down the hall suddenly get dropped from his call. Then I noticed I no longer had a network connection. Oddly enough, the server was fine and could reach the machines right next to it.
My jaw dropped when I realized what happened: the static electricity had taken my laptop, my phone, and two network switches offline! Fortunately for me they all returned after a power-cycle, but still that’s pretty remarkable.
I’m going to start dragging a small chain around behind me or something.
Didn’t Peter, Paul, and Marry do a spiritual, “I saw a man with a long chain on”. Maybe the writer just misunderstood what he was seeing. Sometimes electronics ans systems seem like a long chain in themselves.