Man, am I glad I work at home now.  If I didn't, I might not have one anymore!  I was at my desk this morning - prepping for a web seminar I'm doing in about 15 minutes when I heard this loud POP and sizzle noise.  Then, the smell wafted in - the smell of electricity and burning.  I'm walking around trying to figure out what it is - when I spy a battery pack my son left plugged in to charge while he is at school, well, what was left of it anyway:

 That green bubbly looking bit - that is the battery pack - the words "fly model set" - used to be "straight and all the same size".  It was smoking, it was hot, it was sizzling.  I unplugged it and threw it outside on the concrete porch to cool off.

After it cooled off - I read the back:

It reads

Refreshing time pleases according to the enactment of the manual refreshing, the person pleases do not leave.  When refresh to complete, asking real time to pull out the power supply, avoiding refreshing time over long, damage battery.

Damage battery indeed - damage battery, burn down house is more like it.  It was only plugged in for 30 minutes!

I guess a new rule of life is "if the back of the plug is 100% gibberish - DO NOT PLUG IT IN".

When I'm leaving my house empty for a while, I gotten into the habit of unplugging stuff - I'm definitely going to be more conscious of this in the future - I leave for days at a time, I'll be unplugging lots of stuff now.

I sort of wish US plugs were like those in the UK - with the little on/off switches on them, I'll have to search around and see if they exist - I'd replace all of my plugs with those.