The exact timing of coincidences is everything. At exactly the same moment that I clicked on a link, the computer gave a sparking sound and powered down. I glanced, bewildered for a moment, at the mouse, before my brain reasserted itself and I started going down the checklist of possible faults. Surge on the UPS unit (I keep expecting trouble because the wall socket to which it is connected doesn't have the third ground prong actually connected to anything)? No, the UPS is fine; the monitor still has power.

I get up, disconnect the power cable from the computer power supply, and pull the side off of the case, expecting the worst. My personal machine (not the server) is now water-cooled, and my first attempt at that ended in disaster. There is the distinct smell of scorched electronics, but no water to be seen anywhere. As I pull tubing and cables from one side to another, inspecting, I feel heat radiating at a distance from the power supply. Gingerly, I touch it, and a sharp buzzing commences. Startled, I pull back, and stare stupidly at the disconnected power cable before I recognize the sound as the insects outside.

Mild amusement chasing away concern for a moment, I open the front door a moment to listen; the insects don't buzz much anymore, and it had been a long time since I last heard them. When I first moved into the apartment, there was much less development nearby, and the insects buzzed constantly at night through spring and summer, to the point of sometimes keeping me awake long past bedtime. I close the door and return to the computer, determined to find a credible source for the fault before bed. It is, after all, part of my livelihood; I manage computers for a living, and do much of my work by telecommuting. Further visual inspection yields no clues, however, and I sit a moment in contemplation before touching the power supply again. It is hot, but not painfully so. Heat failure is possible, I suppose, but unlikely. Or perhaps it just led to a surge. Circuitry often recovers from such things, however, so I plug the machine back in and inspect it again. The lights from the motherboard ethernet port go live, with no cable connected (I long since put a gigabit card in the machine to replace it). Not a good sign. The power button does nothing. I unplug the power cable again and putter about, cleaning up a few things and giving it time to cool down and recover. A few minutes later, I plug it back in again. This time the lights on the motherboard ethernet port come on for less than a second and turn off. Encouraged, I try the power button, and the machine springs to life.

Unfortunately, it springs to life with the BIOS settings corrupted, as the first display tells me. Knowing that this means that if I don't immediately correct a few settings, the very next time I reboot the computer it will shriek an alarm and refuse to activate until I go find a spare CPU fan to plug in, I immediately go to the settings and reconfigure everything.

After saving, I reboot. The machine gives me one long beep and two short beeps and refuses to come up. I sigh — it's the motherboard being recalcitrant again. I made the choice to save a little money during my last CPU upgrade and didn't bother to upgrade the motherboard with it. Technically, the CPU I am using isn't directly supported (it gets detected as a chip less than half of its proper speed), but the motherboard supports the raw specifications of the chip, and allows you to enter those settings manually. The downside is that it isn't really comfortable at those settings, and will sometimes fail to initialize. If you power it down and then back up half a dozen times, usually it eventually be satisfied and be happy until the next time you completely turn it off. Since I don't voluntarily completely turn this machine off, and it doesn't affect the stability of the machine once in operation, it's rarely an issue. This time, however, it gets unhappy on the third reset and doesn't beep at all. That means the BIOS corrupted itself again, so the next time I bring it up, it does come up, but with the basic settings again, and I have to start over.

Two reboots later, it's happy. I bring up a complex video demo just to make sure the computer is stable under load, and when that seems to run okay, I get myself a glass of wine and sit down at the keyboard to write down the experience. The sound of the insects has stopped once, restarted once, and is now silent again.

Glass of wine and writing now finished, I think it's time for bed. I still don't know exactly what happened, but since I'm not going to replace motherboard or power supply without knowing, I guess it doesn't matter. My data should be safe either way, and that's the important part.