Was going to put this in tech but it ended up more generic storytelling, so meh.
There was a pretty powerful storm here the night before last (or at least, early morning on thursday). I was just waking up after like 2 hours of sleep, with a bit of light scattered around, some dogs barking, when out of nowhere quite the earth-shattering kaboom shut them all up as lightning... appeared. I'd say 'struck' but it may not actually have touched ground for all I know. Sadly I missed seeing it, but the noise was so sudden and loud it was plainly very close. For all the storms I end up in (not on purpose, it just happens) there's been maybe once or twice before it was ever that loud.
Normally nothing really happens as a result of storms. The electricity to this house (area?) is abjectly terrible so we've got loads of UPSes and surge protectors for everything valuable. This time I noticed the internet was dead, but the router displayed some message about losing the connexion and was still itself on, so I figured it was an issue with the line (note the router was hooked up to power and the phone line via an UPS/surge-protector). Got some tea and went back to bed, as it had started raining heavily a few moments after that crack of thunder, and thunder/rain make me sleepy.
Woke up again later and checked... still no connexion. I decided that the router was lying since the phones worked, and told it to restart, then went to get something to eat. The suggested 2 minutes passed without the router being accessible from my computer. ~15 minutes or so later there was still no sign of it, which is weird, so I went to have a look. UPS was fine, no fuses killed or anything, computer there receiving power. Only the power light on the router was on. Guessing something had screwed up, I picked it up intending to unplug it, and found it about warm enough to cook toast on. On the outside. Still, tried to reset it via deprivation of power anyway, but then even that light never came back on. Totally dead.
About this time I was told that a radio around here decided during the storm that it will never turn off again. You can unplug it to make it die, but the 'off' switch (well, it's a button) no longer works. Bear in mind this radio is probably almost - if not actually - older than I am, for whatever that's worth (24). Also, the blue LED and fan in the side-panel of an old PC I built which was then near the router and using the same UPS had stopped working. The rest of the computer was fine (I think).
Later that day, my Intel CPU in a laptop seemed to have stopped using its 'Turbo Boost' after I restarted it for updates. That kinda sucked, so I went into the BIOS settings looking for things related to it. I got it to show up on the monitor-program again (Intel has some minor application to monitor the boost) but even in games where I was CPU-bound it wasn't going on all the way. Couldn't think of anything I'd changed that would cause that, but just to be sure, I reset to defaults in the BIOS options, then selected just a few settings I'd been using for months without issues.
I left it to restart and went to get food/tea (I forget which - maybe both). When I came back, the power was on, lights and such were on, but the screen was black. CPU light was blinking slowly, and some fan was revving up and going quiet, over and over. Meh. Restarted again in case I missed anything, but that was it: not even BIOS loading. I figured that probably ruled out the hard drives, video card, etc. I considered the screen itself being dead but then... the steady blink of the CPU light, the revving fan, and the fact that the CPU had been why I was here in the first place suggested otherwise. Oh - and I remembered the external screen, plugged in and sitting right next to it, which would have started displaying things if I made it to the whole 'windows' stage of this exercise.
So I took the thing apart and grabbed the hard drives, because I'm not buying another CPU and/or motherboard for a laptop just in the hope it turns out to be the (only) dead component.
Fast-forward to this evening, and I've set up this netbook temporarily. I took the older PC apart to fix that fan, but I noticed it said '12V' on it and decided to hold the wires to a car battery. It was a bit spluttery due to my holding it there, but it began to glow blue and spin, so I decided the problem lay elsewhere. I followed the cable to the motherboard... but accidentally moved the wrong one and disabled the power switch (lol). This is what you get for not labelling components' default wires when they follow roughly the same path, and come with different instances of the same colour combination.
Anyway, after putting that back and tracing the real wire to the front of the case (a part I'd never opened, it was all default) I opened that up and had a look inside. Then traced it again, and again, and again, getting better lights each time to be sure I hadn't got the wrong one again. But I hadn't.
As it turns out, these two little wires, which have been powering this fan and LED for years - and with no assistance I might add - lead away from the fan, into the front of the case, branch into two sets of two, and connect to two clear pieces of plastic. Each of these is connected to a larger, silvery square which I thought to be metal, but upon closer inspection is also plastic. Those attach to the case... and only the case.
My only theory, after staring at this setup for literally hours, is that it... gathers... ambient electricity, somehow. Or rather, it did for about 5-6 years, and now - for reasons I don't even begin to understand - it has run out.
I think tomorrow I might just try plugging the fan into an actual power source, if I can find a suitable plug... or even cut off an unsuitable plug and bind the wires. If it fries the fan, well, it won't be any less useful.
