pee in the router
Tonight chloe was off shopping while I was watching the kids. Zoe had taken it upon herself to paint small scraps of paper towels and then affix them to the wall above the now non functional iMac with tape. This was absolutely fine with me, as it allowed me to veg out on the couch and relax a little bit. My couch-bliss was soon interrupted, however. All of a sudden, zoe announced "I GO PEEPEE IN MY PANTS", to which I responded "WHAT? Nooooooooo", but it was too late. A few milliseconds later, a torrent of pee began rushing out of her pant leg and into the top of the DSL router (her foot was perched right next to it). The lights on the router immediately went out and the now sodden router emitted a sickening fizzing noise. A small puff of steam or smoke emanated from the back of the router, where the DC power supply comes in. Not good. Later that night, I emptied the router of pee and then drove into lab to use some de-ionized water to wash the printed circuit board. This was followed up by a thorough air drying. Amazingly, the router came back to life! I thought it was curtains for the router when I saw the smoke/steam, and was already looking up the words for our imminent call to customer service for a new router.