My Foiled Weeked Plans
January 29th, 2006
This weekend I had plans to attempt a 24 hour coding marathon from Saturday to Sunday to implement an idea that I have for a website. However my plans would be foiled over night and I would not discover it until Saturday morning. When I entered my office on Saturday morning, I noticed that the carpeting was a little damp by my desk. My initial reaction was that it must of gotten wet from my shoes after getting back from breakfast. As I was walking out it hit me, that would be impossible since I had taken my shoes off when I entered my apartment. So I re-entered my office to further investigate the wet spot on my carpet. That is when I discovered my tall green glass that I usually keep with water on my desk lying on its side and my iBook sitting in a puddle of water. My cat must of knocked over the glass overnight.
Initially I was not too concerned because it was closed. I dried off my iBook and my desk. That is when I noticed that both the sleep LED and the apple logo on top were both glowing. I knew that was not good since they are not supposed to be on at the same time. I immediately unplugged my iBook and opened it up. I was extremely relieved when the screen lit up with my desktop active and was instantly shattered as it went dark when I hit a key.
Water had dripped from it the first time I picked it up, but I attributed it to the fact that it had been sitting in a puddle of water overnight. This time however, there was no reason for water to be dripping out of it. Water had gotten inside. I removed the battery and held the iBook on its side until the water stopped dripping. I decided to let it sit for a few hours and cross my fingers that it would work once the water dried out.
A few hours later I replace the battery and power up the iBook. I hear the familiar start up sound and the hard disk spinning. My heart leaps with joy. The apple logo appears, then the throbber appears and starts spinning. My heart beats a little faster and a smile grows on my face. The login screen appears. I login. My desktop and settings start appearing. I am on the home stretch now. It completes the startup process. Its back to life. I am so happy and relieved. I put my hand on the keyboard and it shuts down. My heart stopped. But it starting racing again when this really obnoxious sound started emanating from the speakers. I remove the battery and everything goes quite. Either there are components that are still wet or my iBook is no longer functioning.
I decided to let it sit a few more hours and see what happens. Throughout the day I would follow the routine of replacing the battery, powering it up, and crossing my fingers. Every time I was met with various degrees of successes and failures, mostly failures.
Around nine o’clock when it was still not working I decided that I would take it apart in an attempt to dry the internal components. AppleCare does not cover, “My cat spilled water on my laptop”, so I knew that I would have to pay for it to be fixed. The hardest parts where taking the casing apart and finding the hidden screws. With the help of a couple of different websites I was able to slowly take it apart and dry each layer. I discovered little pockets of water all the way down, including under the tape that is used to hold cables unto the mother board and on top of the optical drive. I made sure to dry everything that I had access to and started to put all the pieces back together again. I was concerned at one point when I thought that I would have two extra screws. But in the end all the screws found their home.
Once it was put back together I replaced the battery and powered it on. I heard the familiar start up sound and the hard disk spinning again. However this time I was not as excited as the last time. The final test would be logging in and running an application. I would not be able to run that test because the boot up process never went past the apple logo appearing. After all that work I went to sleep a broken man.
As they say, “Tomorrow is a new day.” This morning when I woke up I decided to try powering up it one last time before trying to figure out where I could take it to get it repaired. I am happy to report that I am writing this entry on my newly renamed iBook, Lazarus.
