Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2001/09/
If you are going to issue:
shutdown -h now
at a command line. Be sure of the command prompt you are looking at. Be sure you are actually issuing the shutdown command to your laptop and NOT to your web/database/mail server that is serving up realtime web traffic 24/7 to script kiddies worldwide. D’oh! I feel like a complete tard now.