It seems the Insane Asylum is haunted, or we have the worlds weirdest burglars.

Last night as I made my bid for freedom I left Gawain my trusty work desktop recompiling its kernel, and doing other re-compiles of parts of its OS. I know it was doing this as the screens were scrolling with code as I switched off the monitors by the switches on their front.  I then left the Asylum at the same time as DemonP, which left two inmates left in the building who left not long after us. Now they set the alarm and locked up the building. All was well!

This morning I entered my padded cell, hit the buttons on Gawains monitors to check my social networking sites before work began… NOTHING… I press them again, and they remain blank. “Ok” I thought “My machine crashed over night” So I hit the power button on Gawain… NOTHING… Hummm? Power cut? No, everything else is working. So I investigate more and discover the extension lead that powers my desktop, monitors, switch, VoIP phone had been switched off at the wall.  Now the socket is semi behind my desk, and blocked by the wedged open door, in other words “Impossible to be accidentally switched off” besides it was still on when I left the night before.

“ARSE! That’s a tad annoying” says I. Ok the exact words I may have used were not quite that polite. Right, switch the socket back on, power up the machine only for it to sit at the maintenance prompt due to disk errors. Get them fixed, and have to kick off the re-compiles to repair the damage caused by a unscheduled  power off mid compiling. So far I have spent all day trying to get my desktop back up and running.

SO I checked with the two guys who left the Asylum after me last night, both deny switching off the power and say they would never do such a thing as they know the problems it would cause. (I should take a second to explain here that one is a sheep following the new-age hippie flock at the minute and keeps moaning we should switch off all electrical devices at night to save the planet).  So no one turned it off, which leaves us the following options.

1) Ghosts: The Asylum is haunted with an odd poltergeist who’s only presence to date is switching one power switch to the off position.

2) Burglars: Last night some burglars picked the locks on the main building, then picked the secondary locks on the secure part of the Asylum, disabled the alarms and gained entry.  They then did not steal any of the expensive equipment that’s all over the place, but just switched off one power socket before resetting the alarms, re locking the doors, and leaving.