The next time a technician visits your house, make sure he knows his cable ABC. A mistake as simple as plugging a power line into the wrong port of a signal amplifier could cause your gadgets and stuffs to go BOOM. That’s exactly what happened to a Comcast customer.

Everything on the desk was blackened with soot and burned either partially or completely. Three external hard drives, a digital camera, videotapes, papers, CD’s, etc. The floor, wall, and radiator cover were burned, along with the tabletop.

Every cable that was connected to the laptop, Ethernet, Firewire, Power, and USB, was forcibly shot out of each portal, and each portal covered with the black soot. Metal bits and electronic debris from the power cable hub and other cables was scattered around the room and some wires had split apart into copper shreds. Molten silver metal flecks are still lodged in the windowsill.

Dramatic eh? But to be fair to the technician, the installation was done on the roof, and the cables there were in a mess.

Don’t let this happen to you.