What’s that they say about making plans and the gods laughing at you? I’ve definitely had a few tastes of that over the last few years, and this last week was no exception. See, my blog turned 2 last week and I had been thinking of different things I could do to mark the birthday. Then my toddler decided otherwise, and mid tantrum knocked over a glass of water, onto the table where my MacBook Air, my first baby, was sitting.
The screen went black. I let a shout. He let a shout. There were tears from both of us. While understanding that I was the adult who had put a glass of water within reach of an agitated toddler, and my expensive technology, I did also find myself irrationally (I can admit this now, after the fact, calmly thinking about it, on the day it was wholly rational to me) getting irate at this child who had been so bold all morning and now had wrecked something that was important to me over a tantrum about a snack or a TV show, so inconsequential that I can’t even remember. It clearly mattered to him at the time.
With the MacBook showing no signs of life, it was time to take to Plan B – the rice treatment. While this had worked previously on a phone of mine, I hadn’t heard great things about it’s success rate with computers. However, desperate times. Unlike any other laptop I’ve ever owned, you can’t exactly open up a MacBook Air to take the battery out and dry it – it’s all inbuilt meaning that once you do something daft like expose it to toddler, you’re looking at crying into your empty purse when it breaks. Using all of the rice we had in the house (a nice blend of brown and white, covering all bases you see), I left the laptop wrapped tightly in the hopes that it would dry out in our drying press.
Two days later, it was test time. And it turned on. I praised deities I’ve never believed in, contemplated ringing grannies to thank them for multiple candles over the years and thought I was on the home stretch. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. Initially, it looked like the charger wasn’t working. Grand I said, bit of a pain having to spend 80 euro on a new one, but nothing to the cost of fixing the laptop itself. It was telling me it was charging, but not changing from the 11% it was on for the entire four hours I was using it.
Then it started to log me out mid use. Again, not the end of the world, just a bit of a pain when you’re mid conversation or mid blog post (most annoyingly mid-design on Canva) and you have to enter your password, again, just to get into the screen. I cursed it but I could live with it. Apparently, it could not.
On the third day, it wouldn’t start. I tried all the troubleshooting steps. I tried prayers to all of those deities again. I googled frantically, to no avail. This was just like those two times I’d had to have the logic board replaced (no fault of my own, they were covered) – perhaps it was that again? And here we have it, false hope. Maybe it wasn’t the toddler. Perhaps my thoughts of bartering him on eBay for replacement parts were premature. It might be covered. So I headed into Compu B and explained the fault, omitting the water part of the story. If they found it, they found it, I wasn’t going to lead them to it.
You already know how this one ends. I got a call two days later confirming my worst fears, everything bar the hard drive had been fried by that half glass of water – just under 700 euros worth of damage. There weren’t any tears, I think I was in shock. There was a lot of coffee drank that day.
So, it’s looking like it’s time for a new one. Blogging from my phone/iPad has been painful (this comes to you from a computer in Cork City Library, which while convenient, is a bit of a pain to use and doesn’t exactly match my “writing at 1am” style of late. I’ve contemplated a Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad but its seeming nothing will replace the genuine article. This time, it might be a good idea to take out insurance on the new Macbook- and to keep the toddler far, far away.
Send chocolate and wine. Or a lotto win to fund a new shiny Macbook blogging machine.
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oh dear! I do have a €40 logitech wireless keyboard to go with my iPad which is handy in a pinch (you’ve to get used to tiny keys so have to type with your fingers all bunched up), but no, it’s no macbook.