gather 'round for a horror story

[el_grapadora]

cozy up to the fire, as i've got a story to tell...

so i'm in my room during a little get-together at my house a couple weeks ago. i've had a few, and my coordination isn't so good. my mixed drink is sitting to the left of my ibook on my desk. next thing you know--you guessed it--sprite and vodka all over my desk and the left half of my ibook keyboard. ok, it wasn't THAT bad, as it was mostly just really large drops on the keyboard. but this is my new baby. i'm really freaked out. so i dab the nearest cloth i could on my keyboard, hoping to get it all before it can fall between the keys. i'm tired--purely because it's late, you know --and i decide that it's good enough.

i wake up the next morning and turn on the ibook, which is still sticky on the bottom. no startup chime. it seems to run ok...then it hangs when i try to run any two apps at once. i turn it off, pop up the keyboard, and clean out any residue that might have seeped through. i turn it on again, and it seems to run ok. i go off to run some errands, and...

...i get the multilingual version of the old "blue screen of death" (i'm not a windows user!). i restart, and i get the beeps-of-death. my heart stops. i just know this is the end, and i'm going to have to pay through my nose to get this problem sorted out. i turn it off, clean everything up one last time--including the area around the battery. i get back in touch with religion, and then turn it on.

it worked again. just perfectly. well, except for about a half-dozen of the keys along the left side. i cleaned the worst two--shift and A--but they're still a little off. and the A key is really weak, because it took a half-hour of sweat and tears to replace that damned scissors setup. but the computer as a whole is running fine. and now i'm getting ready to buy myself a keyboard cover.

moral of the story: my ibook, she's a trooper. buy apple.

~el_g

 

[oingoboingo]

Beer and G5 don't mix

Good story. Glad to hear that you're on your way to separating your drink from your iBook. Reminds me of a similar incident a few months back, but this time with a 1.6GHz G5 and a bottle of James Squires Amber Ale (best beer in Sydney). It was my birthday, and some friends and I were getting loud and drunk out on the balcony of my apartment (as you do on your birthday), with the G5 and iTunes providing background music in another room. A few hours later, and some of the girls present are starting to ask for Abba. Of course as a self-respecting male, I don't have any Abba in my iTunes library, so LimeWire gets fired up and a few Abba songs 'accidently' find their way onto my hard drive.

So now people are jumping around to these terrible Abba songs, and someone who shall remain nameless (it wasn't me) accidently flings an almost full bottle of James Squires Amber Ale across the front of the G5 case and the standard white Apple keyboard. Thankfully the G5 just kept on playing music, I yelled at the culprit for a bit, got some paper towelling, cleaned up as much mess as I could, and then everyone kept partying

The next day I surveyed the damage properly. There was dried beer *inside* the G5 case (disadvantage #1 of the cheese-grater front panel), but nothing had made it to the motherboard or anything fragile. I wiped it off with a damp cloth. The keyboard was the big challenge. I didn't want to blow AU$80 or so on a new Apple keyboard, so I prised *every* key off with a screwdriver, tossed the whole bunch into a bowl of water and detergent, and then washed out all the beer from the keys, and went over the keyboard with a damp cloth. I dried it out, put it all back together, and voila! Brand new keyboard with all keys functioning and no brown beer stains anywhere!

I'm a little more careful with the G5 when it's in "party-mode" now, ie: no Abba allowed. I'm sure that was the cause of the problem.

 

[JamesDPS]

At least your stories had happy endings -- someone puked on my apple pro keyboard and i had to toss it -- no way was i going to try to clean THAT! granted, at least my 'puters all went unscathed, but now I have to use a crappy old iMac keyboard (i mean OLD)... the "someone" got a firm talking-to and hasn't been invited back since.

fortunately, that whole incident becomes ancient (irrelevant) history when i get a new G5 with a new keyboard, although i really liked the black key pro keyboard... maybe i can find one on ebay...

 

[Nik_Doof]

At least your stories had happy endings -- someone puked on my apple pro keyboard and i had to toss it -- no way was i going to try to clean THAT! granted, at least my 'puters all went unscathed, but now I have to use a crappy old iMac keyboard (i mean OLD)... the "someone" got a firm talking-to and hasn't been invited back since.

fortunately, that whole incident becomes ancient (irrelevant) history when i get a new G5 with a new keyboard, although i really liked the black key pro keyboard... maybe i can find one on ebay...

I've seen many people (and books) to recommend that you dunk it in water asap. I know about water damage etc, but i'd assume it be better than stomach acid

 

[JamesDPS]

I've seen many people (and books) to recommend that you dunk it in water asap. I know about water damage etc, but i'd assume it be better than stomach acid

thanks for the tip; in any case, i doubt i'll let anyone out of sorts get near my computer in the future, and that particular offender will never be back. can't say more. walls have ears.

 

[spencecb]

I had an incident kind of like this last year...I was in my dorm room, surfing the wed ob my PowerBook. It was in April, I believe, and I was getting excited for Madonna's new album to come out. I happen to come across the songs that had been leaked to the internet, and got excited, and spilled my Starbucks coffee onto my PowerBook...so, I immediately turned it off, started wipping up the coffee, popped open the key board to wipe that up, and then noticed that it was all over the front of the PB, where the slot-loading drive is...now, if you have a PB, you realize that the drive is covered with a felt-like material...well, once the coffee dried, it became rock hard, and the CD was stuck in the drive...so, long story short, I had to end up sending it to Apple to get a new drive put in. Luckily it was still under warranty because they said i would have had to pay about $600 for the procedure.

 

[sonofslim]

that's why parties in my apartment are now run off of an iPod, securely tucked away deep inside the stereo cabinet. before that, it was an iBook hidden in much the same way. puke in the sink, out the window, on the cat -- but never on the hardware.

 

[Horrortaxi]

The horror is vodka and Sprite. I hope it wasn't good vodka.

 

[abhishekit]

The horror is vodka and Sprite. I hope it wasn't good vodka.

 

[redAPPLE]

Good story. Glad to hear that you're on your way to separating your drink from your iBook. Reminds me of a similar incident a few months back, but this time with a 1.6GHz G5 and a bottle of James Squires Amber Ale (best beer in Sydney). It was my birthday, and some friends and I were getting loud and drunk out on the balcony of my apartment (as you do on your birthday), with the G5 and iTunes providing background music in another room. A few hours later, and some of the girls present are starting to ask for Abba. Of course as a self-respecting male, I don't have any Abba in my iTunes library, so LimeWire gets fired up and a few Abba songs 'accidently' find their way onto my hard drive.

So now people are jumping around to these terrible Abba songs, and someone who shall remain nameless (it wasn't me) accidently flings an almost full bottle of James Squires Amber Ale across the front of the G5 case and the standard white Apple keyboard. Thankfully the G5 just kept on playing music, I yelled at the culprit for a bit, got some paper towelling, cleaned up as much mess as I could, and then everyone kept partying

The next day I surveyed the damage properly. There was dried beer *inside* the G5 case (disadvantage #1 of the cheese-grater front panel), but nothing had made it to the motherboard or anything fragile. I wiped it off with a damp cloth. The keyboard was the big challenge. I didn't want to blow AU$80 or so on a new Apple keyboard, so I prised *every* key off with a screwdriver, tossed the whole bunch into a bowl of water and detergent, and then washed out all the beer from the keys, and went over the keyboard with a damp cloth. I dried it out, put it all back together, and voila! Brand new keyboard with all keys functioning and no brown beer stains anywhere!

I'm a little more careful with the G5 when it's in "party-mode" now, ie: no Abba allowed. I'm sure that was the cause of the problem.

a very heart-warming story, indeed

when did you ever hear about a pc user doing that?

 

[idkew]

that's why parties in my apartment are now run off of an iPod, securely tucked away deep inside the stereo cabinet. before that, it was an iBook hidden in much the same way. puke in the sink, out the window, on the cat -- but never on the hardware.

yep. i pod it is. i am sure i will be VERY careful with my new 17" powerbook.


but- during college i went through 3 keyboards due to beer spills while partying. luckily, there was a nice computer lab and pledges to go trade me a new one. i bet they wondered why a keyboard would get beer on it every couple of months...

 

[flyfish29]

Keyboard through the dishwasher

My brother ran his apple keyboard through his dishwasher and let it set for two weeks and it worked fine after some sticky drink was spilled in it where almost all the keys stuck. Probably would not be a good idea to do this to a portable though.

This gives me an idea for a new Apple product: iWasher.

Maybe apple should make a removable keyboard on their portables to allow for easy cleaning.

 

[spencecb]

So....I have another story about my PowerBook...I posted the one earlier about my spilling coffee on it....this time, my boyfriend peed on my computer when he was really drunk...he had no idea what he was doing, and no one new it happened, so it sat in pee all nite long with the computer on...needless to say, it is completely destroyed :-( but, the one good thing, is i was just able to order a new 15" al PowerBook....so, I'm excited about that...but still, its sad to see my other PowerBook have a short lived life...I didn't even have it for two years yet

 

[sonofslim]

it sat in pee all nite long with the computer on...needless to say, it is completely destroyed :-( but, the one good thing, is i was just able to order a new 15" al PowerBook....

what? forget the powerbook, i would have ordered a new boyfriend. that's why i date women: no one gets that drunk and still has the coordination to climb up on a desk and squat over a computer.

 

[question fear]

what? forget the powerbook, i would have ordered a new boyfriend. that's why i date women: no one gets that drunk and still has the coordination to climb up on a desk and squat over a computer.

i know some female rugby players that are DAMN coordinated...but none of them are going to hear about that new trick. (they perfected peeing into a urinal. not sure what the appeal was, but i know a few of them use it to freak out guys in the student center.)

 

[nargot]

The horror is vodka and Sprite. I hope it wasn't good vodka.

my thoughts exactly, think about the poor potatoes that were sacrificed for the vodka!

 

[Roger1]

It's the Sprite. It has sugar in it and sticks to Everything. Once the sugar dries, give it up. Oh, I have to mention the corrosiveness of the the soda syrup itself.

 

[Xapplimatic]

iBook nolonger spritely after getting Sprited!!

It's the Sprite. It has sugar in it and sticks to Everything. Once the sugar dries, give it up. Oh, I have to mention the corrosiveness of the the soda syrup itself.

Oh yes. I had the infamous DV/SE 466 Graphite iBook that survived being backed over by my mother's car and wedged between concrete and burning hot exhaust... but one sprite in the keyboard, it was a goner.. it killed the keyboard logic controller.. No amount of cleaning or drying would return it to working status... (sigh)