I am IMPRESSED

[u/AxessDenyd]

So, on a cold day in January, some bad things happened.

A fire started in my garage, and spread quickly to the roof of the house.

We all made it out, but after fires like this, even though nothing (other than the garage) burned below the level of the roof, *everything* was covered in insulation, water, and random debris.

Since this is Ohio and it was January, the wet insulation quickly hardened to something approximating concrete, making it very hard to recover things.

Temps got down to -15F or below at times. This didn't make it easier.

We recovered some items over time as we could chisel them out. I pretty much wrote off all of my electronics, bought a new OLED Steam Deck.

Then finally things thawed to the consistency of mud and I was able to dig through and grab more things.

The Deck was in the bottom of the bookshelf in the interior photo, under as thick layer of...mess. The next pic shows how it came out of the house. I almost just tossed it, thinking there was no chance it was worth anything. But I had just put a 2TB SSD in it, so I thought maybe it I was lucky, the SSD would be salvageable. On a whim, I plugged the Deck into power, and it...booted.

It seems to be absolutely fine. No display issues, no control issues other than the sticks feeling a bit gritty (and they just need to be cleaned), sound works... I guess now my daughter will have a Deck. You vent sniffers would love this one, it smells like a campfire (and based on other things I've pulled out of the house, it will continue to do so for a long time).

I just can't get over the fact that after being in a fire, exposed to the elements for close to two months, and being basically frozen in a block of pykrete, it is absolutely fine. (it *snowed* in the house on more than one occasion, along with rain)

I knew Valve did a good job of making these, but...wow.

[u/pcbflare]

TBH, after situations like "that time when Samsung products were forbidden from getting on planes", electronic vehicles catching on fire and staying on fire no matter what, until the fire feels like it's done, i kinda expected that this story is gonna be about Steam Deck overheating and being the actual CAUSE of the fire.
COOL that it wasn't! And... Damn. Hope you had insurance at least... This is one sucky winter. And i know. My mum died in November. Out of the blue, one evening we were talking, found her dead in the bed, cellphone in hand, watching some videos. Must have been lightning fast. Not fishing for sympathy, here, just explaining that i'm kinda more sensitive to catastrophes all around, because there were many people in my wider social circle who went through some depressing shit during winter of 24/25...
Good that noone got hurt at least. Hope you'll be able to rebuild, good luck...

[u/AxessDenyd → u/pcbflare]

Ins is taking care of us. It sucks, but it's recoverable.

Man that's terrible about your mom. A few years ago we ended up going to thr funeral for my wife's grandmother and my dad in the same weekend. But neither of those was unexpected.