the return of the bruce

many of you know and love my laptop, Bruce Patotot.

last night, in a very unfortunate accident, i spilled water on Bruce. Bruce was injured, and i feared that he would not survive the night. i immediately administered first aid in the form of massive amounts of tissue to mop up the relatively huge amount of water that was spilled. it occured to me only five minutes after the accident to turn bruce upside down so as to let gravity do its job and let the water out.

suddenly, i see a discoloration on the screen. at this point, i still have not shut Bruce down. it is a water stain. on the LCD screen. and it is TRAPPED UNDER THE PLASTIC COVERING WHICH I HAVE NOT REMOVED. panicking, i frantically remove the tape and the plastic, managing a few hard pokes at the already damaged screen. it was too late: the screen was already dry to the touch, and there was a stain of discoloration (which, fortunately were just shades and not actual different colors).

with the help of tissue, cotton balls and cotton buds, i started a delicate procedure in a desperate attempt to remove water before there was any more damage. i shut Bruce down and try to pry up the keys of the keyboard. alas, i was only able to partially lift the enter key, and no more. so what i did was to tilt Bruce to one side and proceed to mop up the water trickling down (oh, gawd) with cotton buds and tissue. not content, i unscrewed what i could in the processor and fan area, as well as the battery. to my horror, i found remains of water there. however, i did not have enough courage to dismantle bruce completely to hunt out any other water puddles.

i tried to sleep, and after an hour and a half of trying, i was finally able to. and when i woke up the next morning, i was glad to find that classes were suspended. i did not check on bruce, afraid of what i will find.

in the afternoon, i finally got up enough guts to open bruce up. i was horrified to find that there was moisture on the keyboards. following mitzi's advice, i broke out the hairdryer and started drying.

i tried to turn Bruce on. after a couple of tries of nothing showing up on the screen (but at least i got my friends DVD out), the welcome screen came up. to my horror, i was not able to move the touchpad (although the USB mouse worked fine) or type anything on the keyboard.

however, i kept drying and i kept trying, at various intervals throughout the day. and i found that with each effort, Bruce was recuperating. no files were lost, and some letters stuck together when i typed, such as the T's, V's, and O's.

but hard work does pay off, and with a few dozen more tries on the keyboard, Bruce was getting the letters right.

what you see here was typed on Bruce's keyboard. sometimes, the equals button would stick, but then it starts to stick less and less. i could've used another computer to type this, but i used Bruce because i could. i believe.

Bruce still retains his battlescar from that incident on his LCD screen. the stain has not yet been removed. he will have a check up once the storm lets up and i can get to greenhills.

welcome back, Bruce.

i promise to take better care of you. especially since you are the sole keeper (were, actually, since i learned my lesson) of my thesis project and my flash projects.