Why Coke Is the Most Dangerous Drink for Authors

I almost didn’t get this week’s special up.  Why?  I’ll tell you.  Coke. It isn’t my friend.  Not this week, anyway. *shhh… don’t cry Coke.  I’ll love you tomorrow.  I promise*

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So, I had a can on one side of my headboard leftover from yesterday (don’t judge.  Rough week and yes, I know it’s only Wednesday and that means yesterday was only Tuesday. Like I said. Rough week) and one on the other side from today.  I handed the one on my right to Lorna (#7 daughter) and reached for left.  Apparently I tilted my hand more than I thought and splashed a bit of the remaining Coke on my keyboard.

Yeah. That.  You know, of the NEW laptop?  Don’t say it.  Just don’t.  I haven’t cried yet.  I’d like to keep it that way.

So, what did I do?  Turned it upside down, of course!  That’s what I do!  I just shook, shook, and pounded the bottom of that thing like a choking baby to get every last drop out.

I’m weird that way.

Finally, when wiping it clean gave me no new drops, I called it good and stared at the screen. The screen was black.  I did a hard shut down.  It returned with black and white bios instructions that I couldn’t do (didn’t have what it wanted).  Shut down again.  Repeat.  Again.  Blue screen of death.  But this time there was a button to recover.  So I hit it.  Took three times for that, too.  But it booted!  And I began a frantic attempt to save everything I could.  Just in case.

Look, I’m used to having Carbonite have my back.  I love Carbonite.  But when I got this laptop, it was sucking ALL our Internet juice and no one could do their school work. So, I put it off until classes were over.  Then they took summer classes.  Those just ended, but two are heading off to university in 2 weeks.  So, once a week, I religiously saved important stuff.  And last week I did a “full” backup.  Yes, I did.  But I’ve worked since then.

So, what is the moral of this story?  Well,

1. Coke is a danger to your computer.
2. Back up everything.  Always.  Even if it’s a pain in the patootie. (And will someone tell me why, if a patootie is your backside, there were old songs about how you had a “sweet patootie” who was a girlfriend.  Um… I don’t use that kind of language, but were they saying their sweetheart was…. THAT?  Ugh.
3. If you missed number one, Coke is deadly to laptops, and two reminds you to back up your stuff on a regular basis so that if Coke infiltrates the secret inner workings of your electronics, at least you can thumb your nose at it.
4. Don’t cheat on Carbonite with an external hard drive.  As my mother always said, “Cheaters never prosper.”

How I managed to half-kill a laptop with just about a tablespoon of Coke is a mystery that not even Alexa can hope to solve.  But, she does hope to solve the mystery of who is killing Fairbury residents!  And, I just had her help solve who is stealing from the residents of Fairbury’s retirement village in a book that goes on pre-sale THIS WEEK!  WOOT!!!!!

 Just a few quotes to share!

I just love that these ladies (don’t think we have men in there yet.  🙁 ) went to the trouble to help me like this!

So, if you wouldn’t mind, would you just pray that my laptop survives?  I really don’t want to have to toss another few hundred at the computer industry.  Cassie is going to be SOOOOOO… ashamed of me.