Saturday, August 25, 2007

Great Moments In Stupidity: Mac Attack

Friday morning I did one of the dumbest things I have done in a long time. I spilled some soda on my laptop. For those of you who don't know me:
  1. Yes, sometimes I drink Coca Cola Classic in the morning--don't judge me, you're not the boss of me!
  2. I am not the most careful person with electronics that you will ever meet. If machines ever become sentient, like in The Terminator, Terminator 2 Judgement Day, or Terminator 3 Rise of the Lame Sequels, when the machines take over they will put me on trial for war crimes. They will bring out the corpses of numerous computers, DVD players, VCRs, TVs and Stereos as evidence of my crimes against machines;
  3. I was not looking at p0rn at the time it happened (this becomes important later in the story)
The screen turned blank--I panicked. I unplugged the computer, turned the laptop upside down to and ran to bathroom to grab the toilet paper roll off the wall holder and use it to dry off the keyboard.

When I got to the office, I looked on the internets for what to do when you spill something on a computer, and I found this amazing video. Wow. Unfortunately, according to the video, if you want your laptop to survive spilling liquids in it, you need to turn it off AND take the battery out. I had no way of knowing this since I couldn't check my internets from home. I figured my beloved Apple was dead, so I called the Apple place to find out what my options were. I figured since it was still under warranty, that I would be okay.


Ninja: Well, I accidentally, spilled a leeeeeetle tiny liquid on my MacBook, that's not bad is it?

Tech: Was it coffee? You might be in luck if it was coffee.

Ninja: No...it was Coke Classic. A wholesome, healthy drink that's made without exploiting third world coffee farmers.

Tech: Coke? That's bad. It's all syrupy and stuff. If you didn't take the battery out, you're motherboard is probably fried. That costs about $750 t0 fix.


Christ on a stick! $750 dollars? You know how much beer and p0rn I can buy for that?!? I can buy a new Macbook for $1000. And I'd rather eat an olive than pay $750 just to get my computer back to the way that it should be working. Even if they fixed it, I just paid $750 to get a used computer if you think about it. There had to be a better way.

Ninja: $750! Wow. Luckilly I'm still under warranty. Hehehee

Tech: No, that's not covered. It's considered physical abuse, which your warranty won't pay for.

Ninja: Physical abuse!!! Are you effing kidding me? That's not physical abuse! I didn't beat it with a wire hanger because it brought home a bad report card, I just spilled a little soda on it. And I didn't even do it on purpose!
Anyway, after going back and forth for a while, I decided I would bring it in to get it looked at. I was worried because I had loaded TurboTax and Quicken on my hardrive and that has a lot of personal information like my social security number, bank account numbers etc. So I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't be snooping around my programs and stealing my money.

Tech: No, we won't look in your harddrive, we're just interested in your logic board, not your p0rnography.

Ninja: P0rnography? I wasn't looking at p0rn man! I'm a Catholic, dude, and we don't look at stuff like that (as far as you know) because the Pope tells us not to because it makes the baby Jebus cry. I'm just worried about my personal info on TurboTax. There's no p0rn on my Macbook. None, do you here me! And even if there is, I swear I have no idea how it got there. Or maybe it was on there when I bought the computer. You can't prove it wasn't, man!!

Well, after letting my compy dry for a day and a half I put the battery back in and so far so good. The Mac Chord sounded a little funny, but other than that no other bad symptoms. I'm actually typing on it now.

Thank the baby Jebus that my MacBook is okay. I don't think I could live without my laptop. I mean, how long can a human being go without being able to use his TurboTax?

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad your iBook is okay. It would suck if you had to buy a new one when it's still under warranty.

Jean Martha said...

I made the mistake last week of opening a pouch of mega-wet cat food near my laptop. The pouch flew out of my hand and all the tuna-juice-oily goodness flowed into my keyboard.

I kid you not.

I grabbed paper towels and started ramming them between the keys trying to sop up as much as I could...

Anonymous said...

Warranties cover manufacturing defects, not your brain defects. Twenty-five years ago my husband put a wet electronic calculator in the oven. It didn't fix it, just turned it into a well done broken calculator.

If you decide to answer yes to your recent invitation, the PX sells Mac notebooks dirt cheap. You can use part of your signing bonus to pay for it.

media concepts said...

Quite uncool of the tech to mention & assume that you were trying to keep porn out of his watchful gaze. Is your h/d easily removable? Would that solve the problem of them looking at your por-- I mean, financial info?
That, and maybe a Sippy cup or Krazy straw, and you're sitting pretty.

When I shopped for laptops about 16 months ago, one company (IBM Thinkpad, if I recall correctly) had keyboards with drainage holes for just this purpose. Oh, the mighty Thinkpad and its heavenly keyboard. Unfortunately, they were way too expensive compared to the massive discounts Dell was offering, and the MacBook Pro was brand new at the time, emitted high-pitched sounds and ran hot enough to iron my jeans.

Anonymous said...

Ahhh, the dreaded liquid-in-a-computer-room mistake. Everyone makes it at once, and usually only once. A person was fired from a place where I used to work for bringing a can of pop into the server room. (that may not have been his first offense, but it was certainly the last straw)

My liquid was coffee (but with enough sugar and cream to render it a sticky mess). My computer room was (and still is) my den, which serves as my office. The victim my trusty old Canon laser printer. Total loss.

Glad to hear your Mac is still working.

JoeyJoJoJo said...

I agree with you that the warranty should really be expanded to accompany damage due to sheer clumsiness. After all, you didn't WANT to destroy your macbook! I recently was working in bed and got up to get some more coffee. I tripped over my dog and sent my girlfriend's vaio sailing through the air. The LCD shattered and I managed to replace it myself, escaping the incident with only $350 out of my wallet! Good to know that recovery is possible after spilling soda on the thing though as I am sure this is in my future.....

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious! (But not if the story hadn't turned out okay, of course.) Glad the MacBook is okay. $750 to fix? I don't think so!!!

Lara Ziobro said...

Yikes -- tragedy averted! Hmmmm, Coke almost got the Ninja via the jugular. My wallet is cringing at the thought of a $750 repair bill...

Jay said...

Give it some time. It'll be messing up soon.

HomeImprovementNinja said...

MacAddict: Yes, that would be the essence of suck.

iloveupstate.com: Well, at least my laptop doesn't smell like catfood, so I got that going for me.

Kathy from NJ: Manufacturers should anticipate that their machines will be bought by people like me.

media concepts: Yeah, I'm sure there's some water resistant models, but it's probably not worth the price.

Anonymous Coward: Yeah, I think it only needs to happen once before you never eat or drink near your electronics again. I saw it happen to a stereo at a part once (someone left a beercup on it).

JoeyJoJoJo: It should be covered. You're preachin' to the choir sister.

zandria: Yeah, I'd buy a new one for that price.

LJ: Yeah, close, but karma protected in the end :)

Anonymous said...

in case you havent heard...i think macs are sexy...
xoxo

Anonymous said...

Seems like this crisis was averted. If it happens again--which, um, I am sure it won't because you learned your lesson--a tech friend also told me that using a hair dryer works. Kinda freaks me out to point something so hot at the computer, but he gets paid to know this. Not that I have done the same exact thing multiple times and have had to ask him...

Anonymous said...

Having learned long ago not to have liquids near the computers, I have since modified the rule: have no open liquids near the computers. Just today I dropped a 2 liter bottle of water on my keyboard. Nothing got wet, but now two keys do not work.

Happily, this was not my MacBook, but my desktop computer. The keyboard was easily, and inexpensively, replaced.

*Sigh*

Anonymous said...

I accidentally poured beer all over my iBook about a year ago. I thought it was fried. I took it apart and let it dry out for about 3 days. It has worked fine ever since!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, my wife did the coke on the keyboard with our Dell laptap a couple of years ago while she was in law school. An unmitigated disaster, so she immediatedly called Dell, we had a 3 year warranty, and the answer was -- big suprise, not covered. Fortunately she did not give them her ID or name; so I called and said PC not working, and because Dell had the in-home repair, they sent a tech out (not a Dell employee). The tech replaced it and commented, Gee looks like someone spilled Coke on the keyboard.

Bottomline, the mistake was covered under warranty. If you need to mail it in, your probably out of luck.

And no, I don't feel guilty about it.

HomeImprovementNinja said...

Jen: Don't jinx me, man!

suicide_blond: You think everything is sexy ;)

Lemmonex: Yeah, let's hope I don't have to find out.

Anonymous Coward: Yeah, I'm pretty careful not to drop this, since I heard MacBooks are especially fragile.

Anonymous: Glad someone else's survived too.

Anonymous: Well, I would've tried to send it in and pretend I didn't know what happened either. It's worth a shot.

Jean Martha said...

If you bought it with an American Express - you might be covered.

Anonymous said...

Oh my god - that is an awesome story. I can just imagine your expression while talking to this tech.

sexy said...
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