Autumn struck suddenly in the city, like a cornered snake. Eddies of cool air shook the boughs of the horse chestnuts, which thereby attempted to play conkers over the heads of passersby along the median strip of the Boulevard de Vaugirard.
Our heroine managed to dodge the rain showers today, unlike yesterday, when she was sufficiently close to home to turn back and change her clothes altogether before heading back out to the train.
Getting back to work, concentrating on matters really pertaining to science as opposed to moving colored pixels or letters around a computer screen, was difficult.
When attempting to clear the way for a colleague to have access to her fancy microcentrifuge, she caused an accident. It was well-meaning – the webcam was out and armed, ready to snap a picture of the bouquet of roses that the former Toulouse laboratory had the kindness to send north to Paris, to wish her well. (Wow! Talk about savoir-vivre!)
What could be expected to happen, did – the beaker of water containing the flowers ended up spilled on the keyboard of the laptop.
Which left our heroine a little time to write this post from another desktop terminal while the keys dried.
NooooO!
I hope the laptop survives. At least it wasn’t Pepsi (and therein lies a tale).
Or is it ‘thereby hangs a tale’?
yes. Or, indeed, wee
What?
Wee.
You say wee, Richard.
Zero to incomprehensible in six short comments.
I have visions of a dismantled laptop, lazing around on a desktop while a fan plays over it, drying it slowly but surely. But perhaps your nice post is making me go all whimsical.
Heather, suddenly wondering if the American expression being ‘conked on the head’ with something stems from horse chestnuts. I had never thought about it before. We don’t call them conkers, of course, but that must be a linguistic remnant.
@Richard – I’m glad I’m not the only one to loose track over that conversation :)
Keyboards are somewhat more resilient than you may think. I spilled milk all over my old laptop and it survived at least partly – I had to remove the g, r and t key and “click” directly on the board underneath. But some time afterward that laptop got killed in a bike accident (no beverages or bike-rides for my new one!)
YAI!(This is other expression used by Richard G.).I’m shepherd Spy.
Anna – I spilled a glass of water on the keyboard of the notebook and is ruined. There is no solution.
I’ve been told that you can rectify water spillage problems on motherboards and the like by immersing the entire affected unit in absolute ethanol. It makes sense, but I’ve always been afraid to try
Jenny – Thanks for your advice.
Advice taken.. Thanks much..
digital frame: digitalframeguy.com/
Update – I’m having more problems than my laptop. All dried and in working order. I on the other hand am all dried and very frazzled. Update sometime, perhaps from the plane at the end of the week.
I’d be interested in hearing the Pepsi story.
Jennifer – I think so! With all those vicious spikes, it’s the outer part that worries me more, though.
User removed said
Advice taken.. Thanks much..
No meaning. But you’re a damnable and indeseable spammer.
Hope you and the computer both have a better time next week.
Thank you Samantha. Was not a good week.
Yeah, me either – and this one will be worse, culminating in a conference that may well restore my faith in science and my capacity to conduct or at least communicate it.
Well hope you have luck this week, Heather.
At least on the conference your computer will be safely removed from accidents in the lab :) Good luck communicating!
For posterity, there was this lovely, if brief homage by Stephen Fry to conkers this time of year.