As part of learning to gargle, my 21-month-old-son has learnt to hold water in his mouth and then spit it out. Needless to say, this has led to some "interesting" episodes where milk has gotten transferred from the glass or bottle to different destinations other than his stomach.
I was however, not prepared for what he did today.
When my attention returned after a 60-second interval - no more - to my son and my laptop (which was on when I had left it), I found he had "transferred" - in my best estimate - about 5-6 gargles-full of water onto my laptop. Which, as I said, was on when I had moved away from it 60 seconds earlier. With a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach and hoping against hope, I felt the laptop for a pulse. There was none. It was done for.
For a good 2 seconds - bad 2 seconds, actually - time and the world stood still for me. The potential damage of a $1,000 - irrespective of whether my company paid or had me pay - paled in comparison to the catastrophe that awaited me if my data had gotten corrupted.
But my high-school physics and chemistry kicked in, so I leveraged the combined forces of molecular movement, air velocity and elevation. I set it vertically to drain the laptop of the water, opened it up and kept a high-speed table-fan right next to it and let it dry in phases (keyboard, under the keyboard, power-unit/fan) across several hours.
Finally, an anxious 6 hours later, all the water had dried up and lo & behold, the laptop booted up! The poor chap (my laptop, that is; my son got away only with a groan from me) isn't out of the woods yet, but at least I was able to take a complete back-up of all my data.
I love evaporation! And Dell. Goes well with my Nokia E71 that survived an oil attack earlier this year (oil is thicker than water, so the speaker was out of action for a whole week). Phew!
I was however, not prepared for what he did today.
When my attention returned after a 60-second interval - no more - to my son and my laptop (which was on when I had left it), I found he had "transferred" - in my best estimate - about 5-6 gargles-full of water onto my laptop. Which, as I said, was on when I had moved away from it 60 seconds earlier. With a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach and hoping against hope, I felt the laptop for a pulse. There was none. It was done for.
For a good 2 seconds - bad 2 seconds, actually - time and the world stood still for me. The potential damage of a $1,000 - irrespective of whether my company paid or had me pay - paled in comparison to the catastrophe that awaited me if my data had gotten corrupted.
Finally, an anxious 6 hours later, all the water had dried up and lo & behold, the laptop booted up! The poor chap (my laptop, that is; my son got away only with a groan from me) isn't out of the woods yet, but at least I was able to take a complete back-up of all my data.
I love evaporation! And Dell. Goes well with my Nokia E71 that survived an oil attack earlier this year (oil is thicker than water, so the speaker was out of action for a whole week). Phew!
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8 comments:
Time to raise a toast:"To the greatest entertainer and the next Sushant Mallya - to Vineet!!! Cheers"
Sushant - not sure if your megalomania is the cause or the effect of your apparent deliriousness. Get some sleep.
We had a similar experience when Ved was a baby. I changed his diaper in close proximity to the laptop and learnt the hard way that "shit does fly" ( pardon the language)
It took a frantic visit to the store, countless hours with enzymes, cotton swabs and a minuscule brush and loads of fervent prayers, before we were able to boot the laptop.
Good news is that we are using the same laptop three years on and although my younger one has swiped a few keys, it's as good as new... well almost!
:) So if you ever fret that you are having a crappy experience with your laptop, you know why.
Hell yeah, in hindsight ( no pun intended) it was a lesson well learnt. :)
An adventure which more people have gone through than you can imagine ( I have dropped into water and recovered 2 of my phones and 1 of my friends when he dunked into the water with phone in his pocket).
Despite going through the phases multiple times, this write up was just *Awesome* , "cant put down till last word" quality. Please consider writing screenplays or novels. :)
@lankythoughts - :) Thank you for the motivation.
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