Fzzzt!

So, yesterday I mentioned I had the third hard disk fail since June. I decided to replace it with one of those new super-cool Serial ATA disks. I plugged everything in, hit the power and fzzzt! Lots of white smoke came pouring out of the computer. Narrowly avoiding setting off the building fire alarm (who knew laundry rooms had special exhaust fans), I discovered... melted plastic and vaporized metal.

It's dead, Jim.

I have no clue how it happened. No evidence of a short. The wiring looks like what I would expect after reading up on it around the net. And these connectors are carefully keyed to prevent me from plugging it in backwards (next time you plug in a SATA connector check out how it is designed; pretty cool!).

Paula wonders if I broke a mirror sometime in June. In which case I've only got 6 years and 8 months to go before this stops happening to me!

Something good did happen today, however. I got my new portable!!! How long will it take me to get it all setup??