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Friday, August 25, 2006
SerendipiTEA: A Reader's Life Thoughts
At HateToHelp, we really like this story. Why? Because it shows the whole trajectory of good things to bad things, and because it involves tea, and because Claire's computer is named Eppur Si Muove ("and still it moves") for this very semi-psychological, semi-technological reason....Thanks Reader!

I was procrastinating my German homework by reading, if you can call it that, all sorts of silly websites about celebrities, on which pictures are posted of said celebrities looking pissed off because paparazzi have totally invaded their private lives. I was enjoying this and drinking a cup of hot tea, which I was expecting to calm me down and focus me enough to begin the translation of a Schopenhauer extract.
Then, there was suddenly a loud noise in the street, and the next thing I knew, my mug of tea was empty, and the tea which it had contained was all over my desk, including inside of my (fairly new) laptop, and my laptop screen had gone dark.

I quickly turned off the laptop, mopped up as much as the tea as I could, and turned the laptop over and took out the battery. I left the laptop upside down, like a wide squat pyramid, thinking that perhaps the liquid would drain out of the keyboard. I called my mom to have her look up further instructions for what I should do, but all she could tell me was to leave it upside down for 72 hours to let it dry out before I even tried to turn it on.

So I did. To improve the drying-out process, I put a fan underneath the laptop so that it would be as aerated as possible. And I did my German homework by hand. And I didn't respond to any emails. And I didn't read any celebrity blogs. And I didn't miss my computer as much as I thought I would. But the best part was, I didn't even freak out that much. Not only had I backed everything up two weeks previously, but in my life, including recently, I've seen lots of problems that money can't solve, like health problems that have threatened the lives of people I love. And although possibly destroying my laptop through an act of extreme carelessness was a very expensive problem, it was still a problem that money can solve.

So, 72 hours later, I turned my laptop over, and dubiously pressed the "on" switch....and it turned on. In fact, it works perfectly. I'm writing you this email from it now.

So here are the morals:
1. Back everything up frequently
2. If you spill liquid on your laptop, turn it off, turn it over, and let it dry out for days.
3. Differentiate between types of problems, and keep some perspective.
4. Don't ever take intensive German over the summer.
 
posted by Claire and Lara at 7:58 PM | Permalink |


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