Subes for life!

That last post reminds me of a funny story. Not really all that funny to me, but people hearing it might get a laugh.

Over the summer I went to a UCSC Alumni meetup, and one of the swag gifts was a jar of “Enchanted Forest” body butter. It’s like hand lotion, but almost solid like antiperspirant or soap. Or, like body butter. Body butter that smells like an enchanted forest, one might say.

The catch is that it liquefies at warmer temperatures…. And that was a surprise to me as I uncapped it one sunny August afternoon and glopped a few ounces onto my laptop keyboard. No problem, I thought. Easy to wipe up most of it and hope nothing gets into the key mechanisms. Laptops are tough these days, and spills are inevitable.* But, that’s not how it turned out. The keys started misfiring a few days later. And not always the same keys. And not always in an easy manner to free up. (Like, on cold days, or when first trying to log in, etc.) Whatever was in there was gunking up the works and then moving somewhere else to do its Evil Deeds** on other keys.

The forest enchantment had become a curse.

I got tired of playing that game (trying to type with wonky keys) after a couple of months struggling with it, and decided to use some Windex to try and get the goop out. And you know what? It kinda worked. One or two keys became unglued. I tried the Windex again. And, it worked! And, yeah, you can probably see where this is going: Again! And, it worked! And, again! More Windex! It works! I doused that mofo keyboard like it was end-times and the last of the body butter zombie invaders was getting exorcised that day.

And … the laptop wouldn’t boot after that.

My son Cameron works in tech and I could hear him shaking his head over the phone when I told him this sad tale. He suggested using 91% alcohol next time. And, of course that makes sense ’cause he’s smart and knows his hardware, except for the fact that I thought Windex was mostly alcohol and it turns out it’s mostly water. Coulda woulda shoulda read that dang label before going gonzo on the keys. It’s the old PICNIC situation: Problem in chair, not in computer. I was too smart for my own good.

One twist to this story is that all this cleaning went down about ten days before NaNoWriMo started. There was no way to get a repair done that fast, and no way to spec and build and ship a new laptop that fast. So, I bought a mid-range Chromebook for $189 off Amazon and gave it a whirl for Wrimo. I’ll tell that story another time, but for now suffice to say that POS is now out of my life and I fixed the problem once and for all.

How, one might wonder?

Why, I specced a new laptop and had it built and shipped, of course. $1500. Problem solved.

*I think like a child

**No relation.