It's Alive!!!

A week ago, a series of foolish choices and bad luck brought about the spilling of a glass of water into Heather's laptop. Oooh the horrors. Several days later, the keyboard was all wonky and we thought we were looking at hundreds of dollars of repairs. It was horrible.

However, all's well that ends well. This entry is being typed on the dried-out laptop, and it's going pretty well. Huzzah! It works! It's alive! The little electronic pets get to be such a part of our lives...

For those of you who are interested, there is a lot you can do to minimize damage when liquid spills all over a beloved laptop.

First-kill the power. Unplug it, take out batteries. Immediately. Electric current through liquid will cause oxidation and short things out. Hold the laptop upside down and let liquid trickle out. If there's a lot and it's just flowing out of the machine, try holding it upside down and tilting it away from sensitive internal parts like CD drives and the like. (This assumes you're thinking clearly at this point, which you most likely wouldn't be so feel free to disregard that last bit.)

Water is relatively benign since it can evaporate. Things like coffee and soda are deadly, though. If one of those gets in there, you may be better off rinsing it with water, believe it or not. Some people also pour in alcohol to speed up the evaporation process. Then, leave your laptop un-powered and well ventilated for a week at least. You might just get lucky like we did.