Watch That Static!

I haven’t had this happen in a looong time, but since it just happened to me, I felt I needed to post about it.

I scooted on my chair just a couple minutes, just sitting up straighter.  My hand brushed the front of my machine and…

ZAP!

Little bit of nice blue static jumped from my finger tip into the speaker grill.  Then, the machine rebooted.  Essentially I shocked my machine into rebooting.  This is not a good thing.  I rebooted into Vista normally, and everything seems fine, but it’s a reminder.  Static electricity is extremely bad for computers, flash media, etc.  A static charge carries thousands of volts of electricity, it doesn’t kill you because it’s low amp, but to a computer, even low amp zaps are bad.

To ground yourself you might try touching a power strip or a metal part of your desk.  When I used to fix computers I had anti-static bands I would wear that I plugged into the ground of an electrical outlet.  I’m not geeky enough to wear one all the time working on my machine, but this has been a real reminder to be more careful!