I've been in IT for a good few years now and know that sometimes sh!t happens. However last night I was using my Sony Eriksson C510 and suddenly the line went dead. Looked at the phone and everything was frozen. No response from the keypad. Removed the battery to reset, phone keeps turning itself off. Threw it in a drawer and made a note to ring Vodafone first thing. Watching a DVD on my laptop later and it crashes saying that it can't find the right codex. It's worked OK for the last four months. Finally tried to sync my iPod, everthing going OK then that froze, blank screen no response. Disconnected it, reconnected it and fired up itunes, no iPod recognised. At this point, I called it a night and went to bed before I destroyed anything else. Got up this morning and checked everything. Guess what, all fine! DVD's work a treat, iPod is syncing as we speak and the phone seems fine. Weird.

My Laptop crashed last night and i had to re-install some drivers this morning for wireless mouse and printers.
Then got a notification of a windows update, is that likely to be the problem?

Were there any bright lights in the sky? did you have a couple of hours you cannot account for?

Nah, laptop is fine now. No need to install new drivers or anything.

Now you come to mention it, I am quite *tender*.

😆

Been in IT but didn't know about the friday failures?? Always happens cos the hamsters on the treadmills are knackered from running all week.

Apparently there's quite a lot of research going on into portable EMP (electromagnetic pulse) devices – like the one they used in the Matrix towards the end.

Obviously it would be very handy to be able to disable a car being driven by bomb-laden fanatics without actually killing them, in case in turned out they were just kids messing about.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/20/cig_lighter_emp_gun_its_baack/

So, nothing to worry about. But probably worth lining all your walls with chicken wire. And you ought to protect your brain from damage – just make a hat out of something metallic, like tin foil. Works for me.