Well, fantastic.

I got my blood pressure checked at the little automated kiosk thing while we were shopping at Meijer last night. The machine came back with results that were not terribly surprising to me: with a resting heart rate of 79 my blood pressure was 143 over 86. So my systolic (the first number) tells me what I already knew, I'm Stage 1 hypertensive (and my diastolic is getting close to crossing from "pre-hypertensive" into Stage 1 as well).

Yay.

The theory is that you're only truly hypertensive if you consistently come in with elevated numbers. I don't have any current measurements besides that one to compare with so this is all supposedly just theory. But let's face it, this was taken at 12:10 in the morning and I'd had the entire week off for vacation. My blood pressure isn't going to get any lower then when I'm away from the office. Speaking of the office, I'm back in the office today and tomorrow. After that I have the rest of the year off for vacation. Let's hear it for "use it or lose it" vacation policies!

Signs goin' up

And now the computer room smells like smoke...

... because I blew up the malfunctioning hard drive. Literally. I powered on Curmudgeon's PC, there was a spark, smoke came out of the vicinity of the spark and then all was silent. After I powered the PC down I took the offending, smoke-emitting drive from the chassis and found molten slag on top of an IC. The slag was still smoldering. Nearby was another IC with a pit blown out of it. I surmise that the slag came from that pit.

Root cause analysis of the spark determined that I managed to somehow overcome the keying on the MOLEX->SATA power connector -- ultimate I was putting +12VDC on the pin that was expecting +5, I was putting +5 VDC on the pin that was expecting +12 and I swapped the grounds around too (the ground-swapping was the least of this drive's worries). If what I'm saying doesn't make sense, look here. In short, "I made the yellow go to red and the red go to yellow," because I am a complete idiot. Fucking good thing I took a snapshot with Acronis of the drive before I started all this effort or Curmudgeon would be well and truly boned by my ineptitude.

I am not a happy camper.

I'm going to bed now. If I'm very lucky I won't accidentally cause the bed to explode, or something.