I did The Very Bad Thing.
I spilled coffee across my laptop's keyboard.
I'm terribly careless about physical things--they seem so very... optional--so perhaps it was inevitable, but I managed to go 18 years without screwing this up. Till this morning.
I hate myself a little bit less because at least I intuitively did what the Apple Genius-bar guy told me was the perfect thing:
turned the compter off, unplugged it, and set it upside down (open, of course).
Then I biked it to Apple (thankful a store opened this summer nearby, in Uptown), where they took the bottom off and saw the coffee had only dampened the start button, not something supersensitive like the hard drive, so once it thoroughly dries out it'll probably be OK. Or not. But the guy said to wait 3-7 days before starting it, so any dampness doesn't short out the electronics.
The guy was sweet and said, "It'll be OK. You have good karma."
I suppose he says that to everyone, but it effectively calmed me down anyway.
I'm using my first laptop now, my 6-year-old iBook G4. I love it like an old friend, but I have to reset the time and calendar every time I turn it off, so I'm not going to turn it off for a week. Also sometimes the connection blinks out when I open and shut it, so I'm leaving it sitting open.
And I hate myself a little less again because I took myself out for 2 iced Vietnamese coffees and finished reading A Partisan's Daughter, by Louis de Bernières, a very good novel about about a young Yugoslavian woman in 1970s London, which restored some of my perspective.Coffee on the keyboard?
#1stWorldProblem
But I'm still not ready to forgive myself.
