Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Fire in the hole!

Many of you may have been wondering about the lack of posts here lately.

Well, about 10 days ago, my new kick-ass system had a literal meltdown. The power supply failed and burned up, filling the entire house with smoke and setting off the fire alarms, etc. Good thing I was home at the time! I yanked all the cables loose and ran the unit outside. What a sight - if any of you have ever seen an electrical fire, you know that it can product a tremendous amount of smoke (but not much in the way of actual fire), all of which smells like copper.

NOTE: Not my actual house or system heheheh


Alienware decided it was a serious enough failure to warrant complete analysis, so I had to ship the entire system back. Their biggest concern was potential internal electrical or smoke damage, specifically relating to the water-cooling systems.

So, off the thing went - they paid for the FedEx pickup and all shipping costs of course, but just being without that sucker for close to two weeks is painful. Just received an update that I should have it back by next Sunday.

All set with my new POS plan, and my main and alt are skilled up and ready to deploy the loaded Iteron V's. Hopefully I will be back online and into W-space by this time next week...

Until then, safe flying!

11 comments:

  1. Wow. At least you received some good service from Alienware. And good thing you were home as well.

    It must have been quite a sight. If anyone saw you running out the house they must have wondered what you were trying to build in your kitchen.

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  2. I wish I had an actual picture of it all. By the time I got it outside and removed the side panels, the smoke had tapered off. No telling what would have happened if nobody home. At a minimum the fire department would have broken into the house and potentially hosed down my office. Even in the short 3 minutes I spent getting it out of the house, the smoke level at the ceiling was 3-4 feet - was crazy. Looked like a friggin smoke machine!

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  3. I've experienced two power supply failures but luckily neither caused an actual fire. There was that terrible burned smell though :x

    Have experienced a microwave meltdown though which covered the whole house in smoke and turned my food into charcoal, so I know how frightening it can be >_<

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  4. Ouch, well good to know you have not been discouraged from going back.. Yours are one of my favourite new blogs atm :)

    Even made me go play in a L1 some myself.. tough but fun.. most problems are knowing wich damn sleeper is a trigger.. seems to be no consistency.

    Come back soon computer!

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  5. Good to see you are still around!

    I think you said you were out of a wh to do some training so thats a good thing!

    Nice to hear you got good service from Dell/Alienware (appears to be the same company?). I've got to admit to looking longinly at some of the Alienware units lol

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  6. Glad to hear you made if out safe and sound.

    And that you did have a PoS about to run out of fuel.

    :)

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  7. Yeah, glad it happened when I was not yet set up in my POS.

    My system should arrive tomorrow, BUT I am en-route to London for the week, so will again be delayed getting back into W-Space...

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  8. Good to hear your computer troubles are nearing an end.
    I had a thought recently, have you concidered using sentry drones?
    They have quite good range and dps I believe, and scooping them when under fire should be instantaneous and simplicity itself. Depending on how survivable sentries are, I could see them being more effective then T2 lights, especially vs. the battleships.

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  9. Damn, that's unlucky. But those Alienware machines are tweaked to the edge, aren't they? I've never had a blow out before, in 10 years of using PC's. I always overdo it when I buy the power supply though, just in case!

    On to other things: how many hours do you put in per day with this WH stuff? I only play a few hours a day myself and am kind-of interested in getting setup in a WH. Not sure I can sustain the motivation over many months though ;). Is that a problem for you?

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  10. Had to take a trip to London and now to NY this week, so still a week from being back online, but I will be back with a vengeance!

    Seafog - I actually have considered but have not yet tried it. All of the reasoning is there - I have it on my list of things to try in the next W-Space venture.

    Burn... Depends on the night, but I will typically do about 12-15 hours per week. Has not been a problem, especially with the long break. See my prior post on "W-Space POS Sanity Pause"...

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