Heat and plastic do not mix well.  I know this, but I have rarely done something to demonstrate this.  However, I found a fairly good illustration of this principle last night.  I have promised to build a computer for Wendy, and I intended to do that last night.  I bought what I thought would be the last piece for it yesterday morning, a mouse, and brought it home, intending to put the pieces I had together this morning.  However, I talked to Wendy last night and she wanted it ready earlier this morning than I would have had it ready, so when I got home from work I started to assemble it.  I had the main part ready:  CPU on a motherboard inside a case with a couple of hard drives.  Wendy only needs one drive, so I pulled one of the drives out.

Then I noticed the front of the case was mangled.  Warped.  Horribly mutilated.  It wasn’t too hard to figure out what happened, but it still boggles me that it did.  The case had been sitting on the bottom of a small computer desk which sits next to my main desk.  This smaller desk has a wood shelf which sits on the floor.  This seems like a design flaw to me; somebody with an office chair is likely to bump the wheels of said chair up against this shelf frequently.  I use the desk as a two-level shelf, so it’s never bugged me.  There is a heat vent on the wall just above the floor next to this little desk.  I turned on the heat the other evening for the first time this season, which apparently caused the plastic on the case and one leg of the desk to warp.

This is a bit mystifying.  The heat coming out of that vent shouldn’t be that great.  I mean, this is plastic we’re talking about.  I know plastic is subject to damage from heat, but I would think it would take more than what comes out of a heat vent to cause what happened to this case to happen.  (Yes, it’s warped that badly.)

Anyway, I can’t assemble the computer until I get another case.  Not a huge deal, but a bit upsetting nonetheless.

Meanwhile, I have discovered my daughter likes me better from a distance.  She moved to Arizona in August, and in the last couple of weeks we’ve been chatting online almost daily.  When she lived here in Colorado Springs, I was lucky to hear from her once a month.  This isn’t too surprising, I suppose; she has a fierce independent streak.  Also, she is doing well in her new job.  She was the number one salesperson last week, which meant a huge bonus for her.  She intends to stay on top, and I have every reason to believe she can succeed.

There is one other thing to report on this week, but I am going to skip it for now because the jury is still out on the final outcome.  That, and there are reasons for staying mum for at least another week.  I will only say it has to do with relationships and that for now I intend to remain friends and only friends with Wendy.

Enough madness for this week.  I’ll have a nice poem up tomorrow and call it good.  See you then.