All Tied Up

I spent an hour last night with the cords under my desk. The flickering flashlight just added to the experience, as did the two curious cats with the "whatja doing" expressions peering down from their perch on the desk.

All I had to do was replace the power strip/surge protector. Unfortunately, I had never labeled the cords (all fourteen of them*), so the majority of my time was spent pulling on cords to see what was attached to what so I could label them. In the process, I finally was able to unplug the copier that hasn't worked for a year and a half. The real irony was that I discovered that the surge protector was fine - it was the backup external disk drive that had been making the escalating whine. I had been reluctant to unplug each cord to test if the whining stopped because I didn't know what cord went with what piece of equipment.
My advice: use self adhesive labels around the base of each cord to identify it. Ideally, do this as you add new equipment. By the way, the labels need not be elegant, just readable. I used return address labels that had enough space at the end to write on.
* phone 1, phone 2, fax, answering machine, palm charger, external back-up drive, copier, shredder, computer, printer, scanner, modem, router, and one that's still a mystery