Happy Birthday, blondie. I love you!

I took the girls out for a pre-birthday brunch on Sunday at a place called, unfortunately, Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles, a southern comfort food place now installed in the dear departed Wharf Rat in Fell’s Point. The food was very good, the drinks were strong, and we ate enough that we went home and didn’t eat for the rest of the day.

I was using my old MacBook Air as a travel machine for a while, leaving the big new one on my desk as a dedicated video editing machine, and I found it to be super-handy. Not worrying as much about bringing my primary laptop out to the dirty garage, for example, was liberating. About a month ago I threw the travel laptop in my bag, not realizing one of Hazel’s travel water bottles was also inside, and that it was leaking from the lid. Before I knew it, about 1/4 cup of water had leaked onto the laptop, and when I noticed it, I immediately shut it down and tipped it up to drain out for a couple of days. Carefully booting it back up, I was happy to hear the startup chime and see the screen come up, but the trackpad and keyboard refused to work.

Annoyed, I followed the disassembly directions on iFixit and pulled the trackpad assembly out to find corroded circuitry at the base, where the trackpad/keyboard ribbon connect to the main controller board. Pulling the bottom cover off with the required force to disconnect a bunch of clips, I wound up cutting into the ribbon at one of the 90˚ bends (d’oh!) but was able to get the trackpad assembly out with no problem. iFixit had the trackpad I need in stock, but the ribbon is not. I ordered the trackpad and put myself on the notification list for the ribbon. I’m hoping water did not find its way further inside and onto the logic board—but I figure the fact that it boots up with no problem means I’m in the clear there.