Power Off

I spent probably two hours this week fighting with a fax machine, but I won. For now, at least. I thought it might end up in my Electronics Recycling box, gathering stuff for the past few months in my garage, waiting for today when I can drop it all off for reincarnation into some other purpose, or at least keep them out of a landfill. My eight year old scanner made it into the box, finally biting the dust this summer after a year or so of babying it and eventually realizing that the couple of medication adjustments for our front office employee to try to help their relationship weren't going to work. I happily broke up with our decade old clunky laptop a few days ago. A hand-me-down from my father-in-law, back when the business world didn't speak to Shawn's beloved mac products. About a year ago I started to feel little shocks on my wrists while working from home, happily typing away ten miles away from the office, a big concrete building, always about 53 degrees with really unflattering florescent lighting. The shocks got worse. I had to start holding my wrists up high, curving my fingers down to the keys, recalling bad memories of piano lessons from way way back. It was the power cord that helped me make my decision to finally push the Purchase button on Dell.com. The rectangular thing in the middle of the cord got so hot after about two minutes being plugged in. I replaced it when Mr. Chew Boy Nicky chomped through the original, but once the burning continued with the new one, I added one more hunk of metal to the box in my trunk for the recycling bin.