ryeth wanted to go somewhere one day. This was about 13 or so years ago. I had been up all night working on computer stuff for work. I was dead tired, had only had about 4 hours sleep, and the car battery was dead in her 280ZX. So, she comes in and asks me instructions about how to jump start the car. I give her some quick, very groggy, instructions about look for the red wire coming from the battery to the car and hook the red jumper cable up to it, and ditto for black. About 30 minutes later she wakes me up again. This is what transpires:

Her: “Doug… Sorry to wake you again, but I’ve been charging the car battery for about 30 minutes and it still won’t start.”

Me: “Does it even crank over?”

Her: “No. And there’s smoke in the car.”

Me: “Shit! What the hell!”

So, I go outside, and there isn’t a red and black cable coming from the battery. They are both black. And since they are both black, she took a stab in the dark at hooking the jumper cables up right (as opposed to either looking for the + and – symbols on the battery for the positive and negative terminals, or coming in and asking me for clarification). She got them backwards. After 30 minutes of repolarizing the battery to the wrong electrical output, she tried to start the car, and she promptly let all the magic smoke out of every electronic item in the car: the main computer, the ignition system, the fuel injection, the radio; all deader than shit.

I’m just saying….this laptop incident wouldn’t be the first magic smoke she’s set free if she indeed did so this morning. If she comes to your house sometime, you might want to hide your electronics ;-)