On Plasma Globes and Laptops, or How do I fix my broken Trackpad?

A plasma globe is, of course, everyone's favourite toy:

However, it should never, ever be used near a laptop. I suppose, it can be OK, but not if you are stupid with it. I have one, and I was curious about what it could do, so I started experimenting.

First, I learned that if you put something metal on top of it like a coin, and then move your hand or anything that conducts electricity through you a few milimetres away from it, it will send out little lightning zaps; the electrical light-show you see inside the globe extends out onto whatever is conducting the electricity out of the globe.

I didn't stop here, however. I covered the top of it in aluminium foil, and the put a little piece of paper thereon. Holding a coin above the paper a little bit, I found, burned little holes in the paper. It was really quite fun, and non dangerous, seeing as the electrical zaps were not strong enough to make the paper burn for longer than it was turned on. I accidentally at one point burned a little hole through my fingernail, but fortunately, it was at the top, and it is already growing out.

Anyway, this was all really awesome, until I tried to use my laptop after that. I realised that wherever I moved my mouse, the cursor would immediately tend toward the bottom left. It was not too long before I realised that I must have magnetised the trackpad on my laptop (as you probably know, the trackpad is operated by the electrical conduction in you hand; that is why it doesn't work when you are wearing gloves, just like with iPods). I turned off the trackpad, and I was able to move the mouse around like normal, but this was not a good fix.

I spent a long time searching the Internet, for something that might fix my trackpad but found nothing at all. I suppose that nobody had been as stupid as I was to amplify the magnetic field of my plasma globe near my laptop. Anyway, long story short, I shut down my computer and let it cool down for a half-hour, and it was fine when I turned it back on.

However, I suppose I could have caused serious damage to my computer; anyway, I recommend all of you never to do what I did.