Oxford life. Thirtysomething challenges. Music leanings. Anything really.

"Andy, here's the notebook you can use to build and test your software"

"Thanks, everything's in the box, right?"

"Yup."

That's how I got presented a box with a laptop in it, with which I was to test my work at RM.

Turned it on, all good. Battery running out - better plug in the power cable. Pull the cable out of the box, and, what's this? It's an odd looking power cable, it's got a strange connector, not one I'm used to on power cables.

Whatever, there's a socket at the back of the notebook that it will fit into, it must be some new fangled thing I've not seen before.

In it goes, plug in the wall, turn on the plug and, phizz, laptop turns off. All attempts to resuscitate fail - nothing more than a couple of seconds of hard-disk activity can be coaxed out of the machine before a deathly silence.

How did this happen? Turns out the cable was for a zip drive, and the socket I'd plugged it into was the TV input socket. Power on, and mother board dead.

Whoops. I cost RM as much as they paid me today for that little cock up.