The Wine, The Laptop, and Other Things.

I'm in a musical mode tonight with listening to Celtic Women and thinking about Scarborough Reef ("Are you going to Scarborough Fair...").In honor of Rain, the Park and Other Things by the Cowsills (OK, so that really dates me...), I'll offer up the true story of wine, the laptop, and other things.As I grandly posted, this weekend I was able to finally get the logging program lined up, all the logs moved over to it, and having the LOTW information all updated with ARRL.It was on to QSL's and web sites.In just moving into the new house, I'm still making some tweaks. One of the tweaks here in the laundry room, where my grandmother's desk and wireless laptops are located (the one in the picture taken at TI5) was to add a lamp so that I didn't just have to use the overhead light.In a brief moment in time, everything changed. After plugging in the lamp, I reached up on the desk to help myself up from plugging in stuff on the floor -- and squarely knocked my glass of wine over directly into the keyboard of my laptop. My laptop that has all of the newly minted log information from which I was to start writing the QSL's.Ouch.Not to worry much -- I had everything backed up. But, there was not much to restore the information to. And spending another couple grand on another laptop was just painful. Because it is less than a year old. My old laptop? Replace it in a heartbeat. But not this one (a Lenovo T60, for those who are curious).So I immediately screamed for help from my (X)YL who brought in rags while I frantically turned off the still powered on laptop and started to wipe the wine off from the keyboard and computer.After finally getting all of it done on the surface, I then placed the laptop on it's side -- and was rewarded by wine running out of the open holes.Ouch.The next day, I removed all of the rags and noticed all of the wine stains from where the wine ran out of the laptop (it was a full glass, too...).It was the moment of truth. On goes the laptop. And nothing happens. No screen lights up. No hard disk runs. Nothing.I then start to remove all of the screws in the back so as to remove the keyboard to get into the inner part of the PC. Once removed, I take a damp cloth and wipe down everything I can.Carefully re-installing the keyboard, battery, and covers, I try the power again. Nothing.Ouch.Finally, as a last resort (with Computer Discount Warehouse' number in hand), I pull all of it apart again. I thought I would push down the power button below the keyboard, but in lifting the keyboard off the rest of the laptop, I don't see one. On a whim, I push the ON button on the keyboard separated from the rest of the laptop by an electronic ribbon...and the laptop starts up.The screen lights up. The disk drive goes. The user ID's are posted and moving along. I'm not moving a thing.I carefully reinstall the keyboard and covers, shut down the PC normally, and then try the on button again. Success; the PC boots up like normal.I leave the PC on the entire day and all of the night. If it is going to fail, now would be the time.It doesn't.This post is written on the laptop. It's still going strong. Somewhere, deep within the laptop, wine still rules. I'm expecting a little bit of drunkenness from the operations of the laptop, but I'm chalking it up to something where the wine penetrates the nano wiring of the laptop. It won't take much to make electrons happy drunk.But I'm a happy camper. The laptop rocks. And backups rule.Scot, K9JY