Maybe I shouldn't have washed my hair on Chinese New Year.
If only I didn't I would've been able to drink bubble tea on Monday, avoid spilling half a large mug of green tea over my laptop later that day, and remembered to pack my note book after yesterday's lecture.
Clearly I've washed my luck away.
Fantastic.
My 3 year old (?) Toshiba laptop already had water spilt upon it last year in November/December time. Luckily I was able to save it merely by air drying it for a good 4 hours.
Earlier this week I done the same again, only this time it was a lot more worse.
While typing mid way through my fanfic I grabbed my mug to take a sip of my warm green tea and absent mindedly placed it on the gap on the table between me and the laptop. Now, normally I would put my cups and mugs of liquids to the side - a good 30cm away from the electronic approximately, therefore I would avoid spilling everything over the laptop if I were to knock it down. But because I was busy focusing on my fanfic I had forgotten that rule.
And thus, whilst I reached over to the keyboard once again to type my hand must've knocked onto the handle of the mug therefore tipping the mug towards the keyboard and consequently spilling half of its content over the keyboard. Wonderful.
After uttering a few "SHIT"'s I unplugged everything from the laptop, grabbed it and tilted it to one corner to let the liquid drip down onto my carpet floor - well some of the water spilt onto the carpet already so might as well..? After I determined that most of the liquid has dripped out, I proceeded to turn off my laptop ASAP, it was reluctant to turn off, so I had to force it to shut down by holding down the turn on/off button. I should've done that first probably...
Aftwards I did my best to wipe all the remaining liquid off with kitchen towels, unscrewed the covers on the back, took out the battery and left it to air dry for 20 mins. Yes, 20 mins because I'm an impatient idiot.
So I turned it on after 'air drying' it for 20 mins, everything seemed okay until I reached the windows startup screen, everything became fuzzy, I held down the turn off button out of fear, the screen turned into that deathly blue screen of death, I cursed a couple more times and it turned off. Sat there in silence and then heard something sizzle, it came from the laptop. Great. Because I was so panicked I had forgotten how to remove the battery from my laptop, took me a good 30 seconds I would say, but once it was off the sizzling disappeared.
The sizzling probably wasn't a good sign. Why did I have to turn my laptop on again?
It was then that I realised that I probably murdered my laptop for good this time.
Decided to call it an early night, it was 9.20pm when I spilt water over it, 9.40pm when I turned it on again. By then I pretty much contacted a good couple of friends about my mishap through my mobile phone.
Left it to dry overnight, tried turning it on again on Tuesday morning, everything appeared fine. It actually loaded without the screen fuzzing to death, didn't make any scary noises, it looked okay. Until I had to login to my laptop...The password box had black dots typed into it before I even typed anything, clearly the keyboard now had a mind of it's own. Great. Thank God I had my brother's Wacom Bamboo tablet installed, because underneath the password box there was an onscreen keyboard - for tablet users who would rather tap the letters in by pen than finger, for once I was glad to have that thing on my laptop - I used to hate that onscreen keyboard to the point that I wanted to remove it, good thing I didn't remove it!
Once I logged on the loading of the laptop was slow, but everything looked okay, all my programs were still there, even my files. My hard drive wasn't murdered.
Attempted to type stuff on notepad to test out the keyboard, it was then that I figured out that the keyboard was fucked. Some letters worked, some didn't, the 'a' had the ability to turn on caps lock as well upon tapping it and so forth.
Attempted to plug in the internet cable, the drive's lights didn't turn on. Odd. Restarted laptop hoping that it would detect the cable upon restart but alas no. The ethernet port was fucked too. Not internet access for me hurrah. Sometimes I wished this accommodation had wifi...
Decided to turn it off since I had to get ready for uni. Whilst doing my make up the laptop decided to turn itself on, brilliant. It was haunted like my old computer now. Wonderful.
I know for sure that the water had done great damage upon my laptop now.
Now, the night before during my text session with my friends about the mishap, one had mentioned about my university offering laptop and computer fixing services. Fantastic, there was hope. Went into university, had my lecture, went to the IT guys straight after, they told me to bring the laptop in, did I was told, then they told me to take it back to my accommodation to let it air dry for 2 days and then bring it back to them to diagnose it.
Diagnosing it would cost me £24. Didn't realise diagnosing will never be free until I went to PC World and ask if they can diagnose it for me, in which they offered a £50 fee, no thanks.
The IT guys at uni also mentioned that I can borrow a laptop from them for free for one day and £20 for one week. Perfect, just when I was about to go on a mad hunt for laptop loanings.
But alas everything will come up to £44...£44 that could've been spent on...that Block B hoodie...or a new laptop.
Currently I am typing this entry on the borrowed laptop as shown in the pic at the very top of this entry. I suppose it can also serve as a test-drive for me if I had to buy a new laptop from this incident, after all this laptop is a Windows 7 Core i3 model. Definitely a huge upgrade from my Windows Vista Core Celeron.
Have to return it on 15th Wednesday - took it out on 8th.
Tuesday night was excrutiating without my laptop. Thank God I could hang around at my friends place for that evening, even still, not being able to do my work on my laptop was painful.
Now I know that I can never be Amish.
Thank God that I upgraded my phone to Samsung Galaxy SII as well, if I didn't I wouldn't have been able to access the internet for Twitter, tumblr and Facebook... This is how internet dependent I have become.
Turned in my dying Toshiba on Thursday.
Awaiting for an email from the tech guys right now on Toshiba's updates, hoping it's before Wednesday so I know whether I'll need to fork out a HUGE sum of money for a brand new laptop or an extra £20 and perhaps £100 to not only borrow this laptop for an extra week but to fix the saveable Toshiba.
I am reluctant to switch to a new laptop for many reasons.
- I need money this year in order to go to Korea for the Summer Campus program happening throughout July.
- I don't want to hunt down another keygen/serial number for Windows Office 2007/2010. Neither am I willing to buy the freaking thing, I am a university student after all.
- Too lazy to move all my files over to the new laptop.
- It's going to be difficult deciding upon a new laptop.
- I need money for my endless girly materialistic needs.
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