Have you ever seen an exploded battery?
Well neither had I until a few weeks ago…
Just when life is going haywire
To give you some context, my computer troubles began long before this. Back track to November 2013. My then almost 2 year old (21 month) daughter and I were watching a movie on my MacBook Pro in bed. I then allowed her to have a yogurt… MOM FAIL (don’t worry about judging me, I’m very good at doing that myself)
…then it spilled… it only took a split second and yogurt everywhere!
I flipped the computer over and cleaned it out as best I could.
The next day, after a visit to the Genius Bar with my daughter, I was given the verdict… $1200 to be sent out and cleaned. There was also likely a problem with the power button.
I sobbed at the Genius Bar, hoping for some sort of miracle. Hoping the bad dream would be over. At the time, I was jobless, having just finished interning (yes…at 30) for this great organization, but they couldn’t afford to hire me, so after finding out I was pregnant, it was time to part ways. Fortunately, my old job re-hired me in December of that year, however a new computer or repairs was still not in the future. The screen was black and didn’t turn on until a little over a year later.
Since then, as I awaited a financial miracle, I have been fortunate enough to have two older generations of Mac laptops passed on to me. One of them, due to the type of design work I was doing, became the more prevalent of the two, but they both came in handy.
In December 2014, the older MacBook Pro, a first generation of the model I had that still sat yogurt filled a year later, which had been in excellent shape and very well taken care of began to act-up. The trackpad was not working. It was on and off for a few minutes and then nothing.
For weeks I was once again, computer-less, stressed about Real Estate Licensing and our pending move… doing everything on my iPhone6.
It was fitting that everything in my life and most of my technology decided to implode at the same time. My iPad Mini decided to join the club, but I suspected what the problem was with it, so I visited the Genius Bar for my iPad that was so overloaded (much like my life) that it had to be re-booted…
I was accompanied by my just-turned-3-year-old, who understood what was going on enough and clung to Mama during the entire visit. This time, I left smiling with a successful (and free) repair, yet I did not bring my computer. The thought of $1000 or more that I knew I could not conjure up was enough to make me panic. I needed to get things done on a laptop especially now that I finally had a working space after years of trying to carve out a space I shared with a toddler in the end.
Even the external mice (a Mac and non-Mac version) were not working after a few minutes of being connected.
I fiddled and fiddled until one morning I walked into the office and found the computer elevated. I slid my hand underneath to find the expanded battery pictured above.
It was grotesque, yet intriguing and after a quick google search, I found the answer I had been looking for…the trackpad had been malfunctioning due to the swollen battery (http://www.tekrevue.com/swollen-battery/)
The battery had long needed consistent charging. A loss of power meant an instantaneous re-boot.
Thanks to Amazon Prime, I found an inexpensive ($20) plastic replacement and was all set to go in two days time!
The new battery, while not perfect, runs for at least an hour, before needing a charge, but most importantly I have a computer again, at least until the next implosion.
Needless to say, when I can, a new computer is in my future 🙂
What is your relationship with technology? Any major faux pas…?