The MacBook Saga

This may seem like a perfectly unremarkable picture of a computer (although the MacBook is an absolutely marvelous machine). But this picture speaks a thousand words - many of them of the four-letter variety. You see, last Tuesday I spilled half of my mug of piping hot, creamed-and-sugared coffee all over the poor thing, dousing the keyboard and seeping into all parts of the computer. It shut off by itself -- never a good sign. (Cue four-letter words.)

So I managed to swab up the keyboard, remove the computer from the puddle, and take out the battery. Then I remembered Sean's (working, un-spilled on) computer upstairs, and typed into the Google box these words: coffee spill macbook. Some unlucky soul had a similar experience and found these instructions very helpful. I took apart the computer -- and I mean TOOK APART the computer, swabbed out the rough patches on the motherboard with a Q-tip, wiped clean the hard drive and memory chips, and rinsed off the keyboard under hot water (can you believe you can do that?). Done. I let it dry for a few days, and put it back together. Ta-da! The tell-tale chord announcing that a Mac is coming to life rang true, and my background picture showed up like nothing ever happened. The track-pad worked wonderfully, but all letters but the q and the tab seemed to be dead. Well, something had to give. So I ordered a new keyboard (overnight, because I'm an inherently impatient person) and, once again, took the computer apart, piece by piece, until the old keyboard came off and the new one was successfully installed.

So: here I am with my computer back, having lost nothing from my files and preferences, with a new keyboard to boot. I can hardly believe my luck.

Oh- and I found out some helpful information from State Farm after they politely but firmly told me that my renter's insurance did not cover spills (and why didn't I keep the coffee away from my new computer anyway?). They offer a policy that covers any machine -- such as, say, a computer -- from klutziness of any degree: spilling, dropping, stepping (don't laugh--I'm sure it has happened to someone somewhere). $35 per year: that's how much peace of mind costs. After this incident, I'm finding peace of mind pretty inexpensive.

Here's to Apple and its magnificent MacBook!