4 seconds to live

My laptop is sick.

Inconveniently it has rejected its own battery, like a Xenomelic limb.

As a result it cannot remain on, unless plugged in, for more than 4 seconds. Even then it must be fully asleep before you unplug it. This doesn’t seem too much of a hardship except when you need to move from room to room. Living in a small flat you would think that four seconds would be adequate time to cross rooms given I should know where I am going, but that is not accounting for the time to both plug and unplug the contraption.

I have found, through bitter experience and several high-speed falls, that there are two plugs in my house that are close enough that if I move swiftly I can make the transition without my computer shutting itself down. It's a knife-edge journey and one that cannot be made without some preparations (gathering as much cable in my hands as possible so I don’t trip over it as I go) and cannot be achieved without looking like a cartoon villain trying to escape the scene of a crime.

Until such time as I find a cure I think I may need to rig up my house with a string of extension cables and daisy chain my way along them to move successfully from room to room with power (and at least some dignity).