After yesterday’s puzzle, I thought that would be the end of it. But sensitised to this, I did check again this morning. And guess what… the problem came back!
This time, I was determined to find the culprit. Starting around my office with lots of powered devices, I narrowed it down to the power adapter of an Acer Inpire One netbook:
Seems conclusive, right? Extra evidence: I took that netbook apart a while ago to install more RAM. All went well, except that the battery charge circuit never seems to have recovered – it’s pretty tiny stuff in there, I must have damaged or disconnected something. Luckily, I was using this netbook only in the lab, i.e. plugged in, so no big deal for me.
Except… this netbook was not plugged in before yesterday. This is a different puzzle!
And digging a little deeper, the pattern is not even exactly tied to when it’s plugged in.
Oh well – this gives me an excuse to talk about knapsacks… stay tuned.