Istanbul's blog

**Posted:** Sat Mar 17, 2007 4:55 pm

So someone is after Gus. He/she may be a hacker or the IRS, a ex wife with malice and aforethought or a random stalker? Anyway Gus' laptop froze. Who done it? Some nefarious rascal hacking his machine?
Actually it didn't freeze, it heated as it caught fire. There has been a lot of talk lately about laptops spontaneously combusting.

AN INQUIRER READER attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.
Gaston, our astonished reader reports: "The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes".

Cindy Brown wrapped an Apple laptop and put it under the Christmas tree last year, thinking about the future of her 11-year-old son in an increasingly digitalized world.

Instead, her gift turned into a flaming nightmare.

To curb this trend, laptop companies have recalled more than 150,000 batteries since Jan. 1, 2005. Hewlett-Packard recalled 15,700 of them in April alone. Dell retrieved 22,000 batteries in December and Apple recalled about 120,000 batteries in 2005.

When we heard the news Emmy was concerned that her pumpkin pie recipe was lost. She had emailed it to Gus the day before. She had no backup as it was not in her 'sent file' where she normally can find copies of her recipes.

Emmy said if I could retrieve the recipe from the damaged hard drive she would bake me a pumpkin pie and later tuck me in bed. Whoooo.... how could I refuse?

Well quick as a bunny I called Gus to find out the extent of the damage and how did it occur? Did he leave it on the carpet or on some hot girlie mags?

"Sparks from the garage" said Gus. He was working in the yard and left the laptop on the picnic table. He was out of beer so whipped down town on his bike for a six pack.
It appears that's sparks from the garage caught the picnic table alight which burned up the laptop.
I was shocked. "Whats with the garage, some oily rags spontaneously combust?" I asked.
"I wish" replied Gus. The garage burned down from hot embers from the house. It burned down too"
I was doubly shocked. "The house burned too...... How?

"Well you know me Mom has been laid up with a busted foot so I raced her new Porsche over to my place for safe keeping. The hot exhaust pipe must have ignited the uncut lawn and it spread to the house. My trucks were taking up all of the drive way so the dry lawn was a good parking spot."
"The Porsche is cinders too!" he added.

This was too much for me. Of all the emotions that welled up at once these knackered me the most. Poor Gus, no house. What will he do now? Poor me, no pumpkin pie and no tuck in. What will I do? Poor Gus's Mom, no Porsche. Poor Emmy, lost all her recipes. What will they do?
EmmyLou and I sank into a deep depression. Emmy thought of controlling her feelings with medications. (vodka and OJ). I convinced her that she was being juvenile and her emotions were impacting her feelings more than reason or logic. Besides gin and tonic would be a better fix than the Vodka!

We were about to go and console Gus when we saw him pedalling up the road on his push bike.
I had a strong premonition of impending disaster.
Emmy had a strong presentiment of chaotic conflict.
Gus had the partially damaged hard drive in his hand. "It's not burned too bad" he said. "You may still be able to lift some files off it."

"Gee Gus, who don't look 'down' or overly pissed off about your loss" hiccupped Emmy.

"Yeah well blame it on me Mom" he said after some reflection. "Men and monkeys are pretty close DNA wise. Mom knew of monkey experiments where infant monkeys were removed from their mothers and isolated in separate cages with a dummy surrogate mother. It was capable of providing milk and a light bulb was placed inside the dummy to simulate the warmth of a real mother. All the young monkeys grew up with unhealthy patterns of behavior, continually moping and griping. They also had an inability to mate. The few females that were able to have babies could not provide adequate maternal care for their young, ignoring, attacking or beating them. The abused infants would continually return to seek loving comfort from these abusive mothers. Pain passed down from generation to generation. Mom ever-loving didn't want me to be like them monkeys so she made sure she was there for me always, through thick and thin."

"So don't fret for me" smiled Gus. "After I go insure the works I will report the fire!"