Coming Back From Hiatus: Illness, Work, and Sticky Keyboards

Wow, it's been a long time since I've taken time out of my day to write here. So I suppose I should catch this blog up on the goings on of my ever-entertaining life.

Illness: Since I last posted, I've basically been in a non-stop, no-holds-barred battle royale with a revolving door of diseases. Cold, Flu, Bronchitis, runny nose, stuff nose, nausea, loss of balance. You name it, I've been afflicted by it or its close cousin sometime in the past couple months. I'm really just waiting for the Ebola to hit. And now I'm coughing again. But I suppose that just comes with the territory of working with hundreds of little snot-nosed, sneezing, germ-factories posing as children.

Work: is work. I (as well as the rest of the foreign staff) was recently called into the head office on our day off for an "important" meeting to discuss such world-changing topics as...
* Some new white guy was hired into middle-management.
* We are going to have a Christmas party
* We will continue to have the iLongman clubs
* The topics for the next month and a half of Longman Clubs (which we get emailed to us anyway)
* Singing children's songs... for the hell of it.
* And being forced to "discuss" what we can "do" to better integrate the topics of two courses taught by two different teaches, using two different books. My answer: rewrite the books, which was in fact, the correct answer. Surprise, surprise.
At the end of this meeting from hell, there was a collective birthday party for all 25 of the employees who had birthdays in November... only 10 of which were present. By this time, 3 hours had elapsed... I was pissed of at having the greater part of my day off stolen from me for absolutely no reason. So I didn't even bother to stay for cake. I just left. Nancy and I got Carl's Jr.
Also, I learned that the master teacher who had brought me out to Chunchen Campus initially, and had been part-timing it there, was getting himself fired (since that comes with a severance package, rather than quitting) because they were demanding he fulfill his "office hours" but refusing to allot him an office. Hey, that's Longman for ya. The really sad part, though: I'm not convinced there's any other English school company that's markedly better with HR.

Sticky Keyboards: That brings me to my final topic of the day - my computer. It was only a few days ago that the unthinkable happened: I watched in horror as a full glass of coke and vodka plummeted down, spilling it's burbling contents all over my 6 month old Macbook Pro's keyboard. The screen, keyboard, and power cable light instantly went black. Uh-oh. For a moment, the sheer shock of the situation paralyzed me. I knew that I *HAD* to do something to stop this atrocity, but my body wouldn't obey.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity of 3 seconds (or so), I finally snapped out of my horror and sprang into action. The laptop was immediately unplugged, flipped, and drained of as much of the liquid as I could. But it was too late. The sensitive innards of the innocent machine had been struck a fatal blow by the its tasty, cold, refreshing anathema. I tried to remove the battery, unscrewing the aluminum bottom casing in a process more akin to major surgery than routine maintenance. Those of you who've worked with a Mac know that, generally, you the end-user are not supposed to touch anything but the keyboard of a Mac.
I was then that I realized: like a witch doctor trying to perform open-heart surgery, I was hopeless out of my league. I could discern this much: the internal, non-removable battery was just that: not removable. A huge warning label cautioned: DO NOT REMOVE THE BATTERY! That by itself wouldn't have stopped me. With ribcage cracked, and the circulatory system bypassed, a little "Be careful" sign wasn't about to stop my mad science. It was the two screws bolting it into place which did; the two 6-sided Star Screws which no normal or philip's screwdriver can do anything but strip into uselessness.
So I did the only thing I could think to do: dry this puppy out, and do it quickly! My girlfriend's hair dryer seemed my best bet. It was here that I made my second big mistake of the evening. To the average person - someone not 3/4 insane from panic and despair - it might seem obvious that little plastic computer keys + hot, hot blow-dryer air might not mix so well. That didn't really occur to me... at least until I saw six of my keys buckling and warping into uselessness. It was at this point that my frenzy finally gave way to hopelessness. My fervor had not helped anything. In fact, it had only made things worse.
The next day, my despair was overwhelming. I was looking at hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in repair costs, a permanently voided warranty, and no computer for weeks, if not months. My girlfriend had a great idea: what about my old laptop? The one I'd abandoned because it's OS had been corrupted. Since I'd just bought the Snow Leopard update, couldn't I try to fix it so I'd at least have *some* kind of computer to work with? GENIUS! It worked, and worked flawlessly. With the infusion of a new OS, my long-brain-dead little white machine sprang to life once more, ready to pick of as much of the slack as it could. Still, it was merely an outdated Macbook, nothing near the splendid beauty or power to which I'd grown accustomed with my Pro. Sadly, I pressed the power key of my dead Pro, if only to prove to myself that there was truly no hope.
Suddenly, a Christmas miracle came early: the Pro chimed to life, screen popping on happily, as if it'd just woken up from a nap, rather than from the grave. It merrily booted up as though nothing had happened at all. Nancy and the internet had been right all along - my logic board hadn't been nuked. It just needed to dry out.
This left with with only two minor problems. The first were the keys I'd melted. I found that I could actually order individual keys online from Hong Kong. But in the meantime, I discovered that the keys from my little white Macbook - now once again happily loading - could easily be transplanted into the sad, vacant key-squares of it's bigger, stronger cousin. So it looks a little strange having 6 snow-white keys in the otherwise coal-black board. But it's a hell of a lot better than no keys at all... at least until I get some true replacements.
The other problem - as the title suggests - is that as the coke has dried, it's left behind it's sticky residue underneath the keys, making it feel as though I'm trying to type through molasses. Tonight I'm planning on popping off the keys one by one and giving the undersides a good cleaning. Hopefully that will be enough to clear up the problem.

And so concludes the tale of how, through the combined power of Santa Claus and Steve Jobs, Chris came to believe in Christmas miracles again, and got not 1, but 2 working computers.

(CS) TAW Out.

two pet snakes