Too much XP may melt your brain and power cord

Ever have one of those Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor "More Power!" moments? Ryan Tomayko did last week, while using two instances of Parallels Desktop on his MacBook to do site testing against Internet Explorer.

After about ten minutes of running two virtual machines, Ryan detected the unmistakable odor of burning plastic. He later determined that about 1/2 inch of his power cord had melted (a symptom noted by some very ticked-off Canadian Apple Store customers), which led him to reconfigure Parallels for lean running to lower his CPU load and hence his power consumption.

Now, a good power supply should never melt -- ever! -- and you can't really blame IE for this one, as it's likely any CPU-hungry app would have triggered the same flaw. Still, Ryan is justifiably annoyed about the whole thing. Check out his post, and also his explanation of REST to his wife: downright Hofstadterian.

[via digg]