Ressurection!

Just about Halloween I had a stupid stupid accident and killed my laptop. I made the error of putting my unprotected laptop in a messenger bag with a re-corked bottle of wine before driving down to the cabin for the night. As I walked in the door I noticed wine dripping from the bag. The bottle had tipped over and opened and had absolutely SOAKED my laptop.

And then I made the fatal error. I tried to turn it on.

Nothing. And then I came to my senses and remembered that electricity and wetness inside a laptop is a bad bad combo.

I ripped out the battery and tipped it on edge to drain the red wine out of the CD-slot and left it in the warm laundry room all night hoping it would dry out and come back to life. Nope.

Then I took it apart. I’d already ordered a new one, and I figured since it was probably dead, I should open it up and see if it looked like it could be cleaned. That was an exciting experiment, but even though we got all the way in (there are a LOT of tiny screws on a Mac laptop), it was hopeless.

So, I put it on a shelf and forgot about it until last night when I was heading out. I put the dead laptop on my desk and stuck the power cord in, just because, and what do you know? It came back to life!

It was back. Three months later. It booted up just fine. The keys are still sort of sticky, so I have to do some cleanup, but it makes me feel much better to know I have a backup if I need it.

I guess the moral of the story is, don’t throw out “dead” laptops. Who knows? They could come back to life! Reduce, reuse, recycle indeed …