My Week: When My Shower Electrocuted Me & Ate My Computer

Sometimes your shower tries to kill you.

And it misses.

And kills your computer instead.

Okay, context:

About a week ago, hubby got a shock turning off the shower. In case you didn’t know, electricity + water = ☠️.

So, being the responsible and logical husband that he is, he said, “Don’t use this faucet. I’ll get it figured out.”

And like the goldfish-memory author-on-a-deadline that I am…I said, “Okay, Honey,” then popped the faucet on the next day and sent a stream of voltage water into my hands…and felt it in my teeth.

After that, Hubby taped giant signed over the faucets saying “DO NOT USE” since clearly my poor memory was going to kill me.

The electrician came and fiddled around–crawling under our house, examining panels behind my (newly organized) bookshelves (that I had to dismantle. *weep*), and climbing in our attic. I didn’t envy him.

Apparently our shower was clocking in at 120 volts. (For context, see GIF above.)

In the end (spoiler alert!) I didn’t die and the electrician saved the world. (Because us Brandese were about to unleashed our unshowered selves to poor planet. I’m sorry, environment. #sometimesallnaturalisntbetter.) But all that rebellion from our house’s little electric brain fried my computer. (At least, that’s what I think happened. That hasn’t been proven and it’s totally my author brain thinking the house is rebelling against my book. For all I know, an ant could have crawled into the computer and ate an important nanobyte or something.)

My theory is that I left the computer plugged in during all the off-and-on-and-off-and-on of our electricity and something went weird inside the desktop.

Now before you freak out, I had everything backed up like a good responsible author.

(Actual truth: The computer died and I managed to get it working again long enough to back it up and now I’ve learned my lesson and WILL NEVER LET IT GET THAT CLOSE AGAIN.)

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because my computer is currently two hours away in a computer hospital, getting a lobotomy. And I’m typing this blog post on my iPad. And my iPad doesn’t like writing blog posts. My arguments with it go a little like this:

ME: I need to write a blog post.
iPAD: No.
ME: Hey, why aren’t the graphics working–
iPAD: No.
ME: Can’t you just let me post one teensy photo–
iPAD: No.
ME: But I know you can do HTML
iPAD: No.

It’s basically besties with Grumpy Cat. So here I am sharing the “Life happens” post of the week to let you know that my shower tried (and failed) to murder me and my computer took the hit. I’ve requested that my computer return to me with Wall-E’s personality installed.

Basically, I don’t have the resources to pen the blog post I would have liked to post. And if you’re wondering why I haven’t responded to comments from last week’s blog post, it’s because of the same reason.

Sometimes this stuff happens. Sometimes your shower breaks and your computer breaks and your fingernail breaks all in the same week when you’re on a writing deadline. And it feels like the end of the world, but it’s not.

Just spray in some dry shampoo, grab a pen and paper, get a manicure, and write a somewhat-lame blog post. 😉 Life goes on. And that’s how we get stories.


Okay, so how often do you back up your computer? Be honest.

(And maybe let this blog post prompt you to do it again. Now. Today.)

What’s an unusual or crazy thing that has happened to you? Let’s share some stories.

 

 



 

About Nadine Brandes

NADINE BRANDES once spent four days as a sea cook in the name of book research. She is the author of the award-winning ROMANOV, FAWKES, and the Out of Time Series. Her inner fangirl perks up at the mention of soul-talk, Quidditch, bookstagram, and Oreos. When she's not busy writing novels about bold living, she's adventuring through Middle Earth or taste-testing a new chai. She and her Auror husband are building a Tiny House on wheels with their Halfling children. Current mission: paint the world in shalom.
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45 Comments

  1. I probably found that more amusing than I should have… *coughs* And backing… up… my computer. I think my dad has us on a backup plan but I’m not sure? I hope so. 😀

    Good luck with getting everything fixed!

  2. I have a confession to make.
    I… haven’t backed up my computer in 82. (My computer keeps reminding me >.<) But after reading this…

    The weirdest thing my computers ever done was shut off, refuse to power up, and then give me this screen of death with a question mark in it. After much googiling, I found out my hard drive had dried out if the blue.

    I lost about a month or two of pictures and stuff (because I hadn't backed it up… oops) and had to go buy a replacement hard drive (and RAM, while I was at it) from a computer store. And then watch some YouTube videos on how to replace it myself.

    Guess it wasn't alright, though, as it's running great a year and a half later. Still haven't learned my "ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR STUFFF" lesson though…

  3. Whoa, crazy shower. I’m glad it failed in murdering you. 😛

  4. Wow. When I can’t make a blog post deadline I just say “Sorry, no post this week” and leave it at that.
    This was much more entertaining.
    Crazy stories? Um… I started this thing called college, and it has tried to kill me.
    Still not sure if it succeded.

    • I’m glad you found entertainment in my PAIN and NEAR DEATH, Brandon. -.-

      Jk. I hope college doesn’t kill you, though if it does maybe you’ll come back as a zombie. That’d kind of be cool. You could eat other people’s brains and then absorb their memories and stories and be an awesome novelist. Just sayin’.

  5. I back up religiously! It’s why Scrivener for iOS is the best app ever and Scrivener is the best program. My laptop died over the summer so I’m sharing with my son (and sometimes husband and daughter). Often I switch from laptop to iPad to write. I’m not as good about backing up Word (reminds self to copy short story and flash fiction piece onto Dropbox).

    • I had no idea Scrivener backed up everything! I don’t use it because I’m quite happy with my Microsoft Word and Dropbox set-up, but I have this vision of diving into Scrivener someday and loving it. 😛

  6. I try to keep most everything I need saved on googledocs or on an external drive. But I’m always worried what if something happens to that drive? I should have a backup of my backup! But I’m trying to resist the crazy – if I start down that road…

    • Ha! It’s a dangerous road…but also a safe one. (If that makes any sense.) 😛

    • We backed up all our music and old photos on an external drive and then the cord broke. Sooo yeah. Now I have been super lazy in ordering a new cord which we’re not even sure that would work, it could be the drive itself is broken…

      • I’ve gone through several power cords – they tend to go out faster than externals – it’s the power supply on the cords that go bad. You can pick up an inexpensive replacement at Best Buy or Radio Shack. If it doesn’t work (if it’s the drive itself), Best Buy has a great return policy.

  7. My Week: When I was doing school but then I read your blog post and died of laughter. RIP Jonathan. xDDDD

  8. This was way too funny. Thanks, Nadine. I needed this today. *stealthily hits backup On computer*

  9. not the same (i don’t think… ) as backing up the actual computer – but i have a ‘BACK UP’ folder to which i save every doc i touch in the course of the day. at the end of said day, i copy those files to a flash drive. DOUBLE BACK UP – i also save every doc i touch to DROP BOX.
    i’ve had a few scares, and lost stuff before – don’t want that to happen again!!
    thanks for the electrifying post!!

  10. Wow! Glad you both are okay! Scary!

  11. I use Dropbox to store all of my documents, which is nice because it means they back up automatically and I can access them from any computer too.

  12. Eek! Scary shower, I’m very glad that it was not yet your time to die, and that thr computer files were saved. We have ours do automatic backups to a hard drive one day and then a computer the next, and repeat.

  13. ‘basically besties with Grumpy Cat’ is the best way to describe technology sometimes!

    I actually find that first GIF super creepy… maybe because it looks like he’s laughing? Anyway, I’m glad that wasn’t you 😉
    Jem Jones

  14. Oh my goodness. How scary! So glad you’re all right though the computer is a casualty. I back-up important stuff on an external hard drive, in Dropbox, and occasionally I even email my updated WIP to myself. Not as often as I should, but I do it.

    As for a crazy thing that happened: I was cooking dinner once and stepped away from the stove. Instantly, the entire, heavy fluorescent light panel dropped exactly where I was standing. Plaster and wood shards and plastic and glass flew everywhere. Missed my toddler in her high chair and my baby in his little exer-saucer thingy by inches. Truly terrifying, but I praise God no one was hurt.

  15. Here’s fun…

    My evil laptop decided I no longer needed it to be portable (i.e. the battery died) and after a descent into madness (otherwise known as dealing with Windows 10) I caved to the pressure from the Mac fiend I live with – and now… I can’t fully back up (at least until I can afford a new external that agrees with Mac). In the meantime, my tiny little jump drives hate me.

    • Oh no! That’s so odd that you can’t find an external harddrive that agrees with Mac! Is there something online that you could use as a back-up? I know a lot of people use Dropbox or iCloud or other things like that.

  16. Yikes. The whole shower/faucet thing sounds scary. I actually back up my computer fairly often. I’ve heard too many horror stories about people losing tons of work. And when our backup wasn’t working one time, I kept emailing my doc to myself. I might be a little bit paranoid. 😉

  17. ashes2beautytrout

    I’m so glad you’re still alive, Nadine! Hey, now you can say that you have survived an assassination attempt so that’s pretty cool. 😛

  18. In 2007, I had an old desktop with like Win98 or Win Vista or something on it. I had a flashdrive with all of my stories on it that I’d been writing for a few years. I plugged it in, sparks flew, and bam everything on that flashdrive was completely gone. I wrote a poem about it. (I used to write poetry a lot) Anyway I was devastated and angry. Didn’t really write anything major and lengthy for several years after. The cool thing is, I bought my first laptop that year with my own money and was very proud of myself for that 🙂

  19. I should follow up by saying, from then on, I use Dropbox and I’ve never had any problems with it. I love it. It’s efficient, I can access my stuff anywhere and I can keep it safe from computer crashes and whatnot

  20. I don’t back my stuff up very often… Maybe I should. Hm weird experiences, I’ve eaten oatmeal with garlic in it, that was pretty weird, so was eating chocolate syrup with cumin…

  21. Reaction 1: Wow. O.O

    Reaction 2: *dies laughing* (because you’re hilarious, not because of the tale of woe).

    Now you totally need to write The Story of Nadine and the Murderous Shower and market it as a MG book and make lots of money. 😉

    I have a tragic backup story. It happened years and years ago, when I was a newly minted author and didn’t know much. Anyway, I was writing the third book in a sci-fi trilogy, and after months of typing and well over 150K words, I was 3 days away from finishing. 3 days.

    And the desktop hard drive decided to die. 🙁

    And never return. *insert weeping and gnashing of teeth*

    Thankfully, I had a partial version saved on a laptop. But I still lost 2/3 of the book and had to go back and rewrite it all. From memory. Because I didn’t use notes or an outline (like I said, didn’t know much).

    Anyway, glad you survived and thanks for turning it into a riveting, hilarious blog post! 😀

I love hearing from you!