Problems of a Mouse Power Nature

Thursday was a very expensive day.

For the past week, my car’s been making a rattling sound when I turned on the fan.  The higher I turned it on, the worse the sound.  At first, I thought water had gotten into the system (with all the rain we had), so I ignored it hoping the sound would go away.  When the dry weather arrived and the sound didn’t leave, I knew there was a problem.

So I brought my car in and the guy mentioned offhand, “I hope it’s not a mouse.”

“A mouse?", I asked.

“Yes, they look for someplace warm and dry and find their way into cars.”

So he went to check on my car.  Sure enough, it turns out I was paid a visit by a certain mouse.  Personally, I would have rather had a visit with Mickey Mouse… in Disney World!  The mouse crawled into my car’s heating/cooling system, built a nest and got all comfortable.  Then I turned on the fan and made minced mouse.  (No, this will *NOT* be a future Cooking With TechyDad installment!)  I was told fixing it would take some time as most everyone had gone home and they needed to remove my dashboard and go through my systems.  We were looking at about a $160 hit to my wallet.

I was loaned a car for the next day and went home.  That night, I went on my computer, started to Skype with my parents and…. my computer went dead.  Completely off.  I turned it back on and noticed that the battery was running low.  Yet, I was plugged in.  Perhaps the outlet was bad?  No, the baby monitor plugged into it worked just fine.  I even tried another outlet.  No dice.

There could only be two possibilities.  Either my laptop’s AC adapter was bad (possibly fried when I left it plugged in overnight) or my laptop itself had a problem.  So I spent last night frantically backing up my PC before the battery ran out.  Luckily, I had run a backup recently and so just had to update that backup.  Now I’m looking for a new AC adapter to see if that’s the problem.

With all of Thursday’s events, I think I need to consult with a mouse, a duck, a dog, a pooh bear, and a tigger in Disney World.  Who wants to join me?