crazyscot

(I need a new icon for this post. My current "weird" icon isn't weird enough. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it myself.)

So there I was at work, just after 5pm, starting to think about going home. I'm using the WinXP machine on my desktop, accessing the company email (google-hosted via the standard web interface). All of a sudden, as I'm archiving off some old emails, the machine looks like it's shutting down. Uncommanded.

What?

No, it has locked itself. And only (some other user I've never met) or an administrator can unlock it.

Bwuh?????

My incredulous exclamations attracted my neighbour and my boss, who were both as utterly boggled as I was.

I picked up the phone to the helpdesk, who had gone home for the day. The duty chap took the details - was as surprised at the description as we were! - and asked if it was urgent. Thankfully I had already completed the urgent task that required me to run the in-house Windows software, so he took details and said they'd investigate in the morning. Fair enough.

In the meantime my boss went directly to one of the senior IT bods, with whom he has a good working relationship. He was sufficiently intrigued to decide that he would put delay his departure for the day and come and investigate. He has admin access and was able to unlock the machine (which, in the usual Windows way, forcibly ends the logged-in user's locked session); he proceeded to log in and start poring through the machine's logs; he's very intrigued and wants to get to the bottom of this.

But. I mean. What. I don't even know where to start. It was as if my Windows machine - a full first-class PC, not a thin client, nor a Remote Desktop server - had routed its keyboard, mouse and monitor to some other random machine somewhere on the network. This one takes the biscuit, the cake, the 1000lb weight, and the feather duster.

Um. So. While our IT people try and puzzle it out, any ideas, dear f'list?

Of all my favourite ways to wake up in the morning... let's just say that being called out by my inner paranoid on a full-scale security alert because the garage door just opened itself isn't one of them. It really did happen; this house has an electric opener, which is relatively loud in the upstairs bedrooms and pretty unmistakeable. I remember glancing at the clock as I threw on my dressing gown, seeing it was 4:04 and thinking something suitably inscrutable. As it happens, that was appropriate status code as I got to the garage just in time for the door to finish closing itself.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot?

My best guess is that the opening control on the wall is dodgy; I already knew it was half dodgy as the plastic button (which actuates a microswitch) was half-jammed. (This is as opposed to the remote, which we know is dodgy, but in a different way - the battery spring is loose.) I popped the plastic button off the switch trivially (not a good sign!) and replaced it, and it's definitely sitting differently in the surround. Why it chose that particular moment to activate remains a mystery, but I switched off the opener at the mains and will leave it that way for a few days.

No, I didn't get back to sleep, why do you ask?