Of Course, It's Obvious Really

Unless you are the owner of a completely free spirit, sometimes you have to rely on the judgement and experience of others to get you through life. You can sit there struggling or you can ask somebody who knows or the third option is to buy a big hammer.

Has there ever been an invention where the phrase "don't worry about it, switch it off," has been more often used than in connection with the PC.

Runtime Error? Switch it off.
PC won't shut down? Turn it off at the wall
Corrupt data? Yep, switch it off.

We lose our internet connection at work, this means that not only can we not access HMRC and Companies House sites but more importantly we can't send/receive e-mails. I phone Nick who looks after the complicated bits of our system that I cannot manage.

"Nick, Hi - look our e-mail isn't working, we're connected but nothing is coming through. Any ideas?"
"Switch it off and wait five minutes."

I know engineers who hate computers because they don't fit in with the neat ordered world of engineering in its purest form. If part of an engine isn't working you repair or replace it, you don't switch the engine off and wait five minutes, your engineering brain tells you that if it fails once its bound to fail again.

Anyway I switch off the Sonicwall device that makes everything work, wait five and switch it back on - nothing. Over the next hour I repeat this three or four times - nothing. At half past ten - two and a half hours after discovering the problem, e-mails start coming through and Internet connection is restored. No error messages, no warnings, no "Hi there, this is your computer and things are just Hunky Dory," it just starts to work again as if somebody had turned on a tap.