- Cerridwen -
"What in Hades were you doing with tea
anywhere near the internals of your computer?!"
- Nehmo -
After a few years of faithful service, including surviving a house fire,
my machine, a 533 MHz e-Machine mini-tower, pleaded with me for a larger
hard drive. She was so full, she was having trouble defragging herself,
and there was nothing left that I could bear to delete. So I got an 80
GB and installed it, but it took me about a week:
http://snipurl.com/47pn . Since I had been unplugging and replugging so
much, I had left the wrap-over cover off for convenience.
To celebrate the added space, I downloaded a movie. My wife and I then
prepared to watch the movie by making some tea. I'm a little unorthodox
in tea consumption in that I don't always have my tea the same way, and
on this occasion, I loaded my mixture with sugar and creamer; this made
for a high ion concentration, and consequently, a high electrolyte
conductance. .
As a precautionary measure just prior to watching the movie, I went to
move the cordless mouse away from the edge of the table to a more secure
position. But I was already holding something in my left hand, so I
reached with my right, my usual mouse hand, for the operation. But my
right was just as preoccupied as my left. I also was holding my
sugar-cream tea with my right. I tilted the cup when I reached for the
mouse, and the tea poured down both sides of the m'board.
After much experimentation and attempts to fix, both by myself and a by
knowledgeable friend who had just recently been fired from Sprint, we
determined the m'board, and all three drives were destroyed. Spraying
with cleaner didn't help. But it so happened that my friend owed me a
computer or something like that for an electrical repair I had done to
his house. He gave me a "new" box and board, also a 533, and I installed
my original 15 GB hard drive.
More than you wanted to know probably.