In the great scheme of things, this is pretty minor. But it’s nice to know that, as Apple relegates my computer to the no-longer-supported column, someone — namely Charles Moore — is bearing witness to its passing.
That said, my mighty WallStret has just withstood the latest insult to its durability: a glass of water straight into its innards a few months ago.
At first it wouldn’t boot at all, emitting piteous whines from the hard drive. Then Chris, miracle technician at Mac Station, suggested I disconnect the keyboard — that just maybe, that could allow it to boot.
So it did, and for the next two months I ran this critter with a USB keyboard plugged into it. This was the cyberequivalent of extreme life support, and reluctantly I started trying to scrounge together enough used equipment to persuade a dealer to let me swap it for, say, an iBook.
Several discouraging calls later, I was disabused of the notion that my worldly possessions were worth diddly. I was losing hope.
And then late one night, I realized the system was going to need a restart. I saved the document I was working on, gave it some name or other… and realized I’d just been typing on the WallStreet’s keyboard. It was working again!
Even weirder, I had no memory of reconnecting the keyboard. Somehow, gravity, the pressure of the external keyboard or some mystical lifeforce deep within this laptop’s logic board pressed a set of connection terminals home. And now it works again.
I’m grateful, of course. But I can’t help but think that maybe we’re each allotted a certain number of small miracles in our lifetime. And if that’s so, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have chosen to use one up this way.
