Never heard of it. I'll have to try it.

They ARE???

Let me suggest something a circus aerialist once pointed out to me.

If you are going to walk the tightwire then look where you want to go because wherever you do look, that is where you are going.

If you look at your feet, you're going down ...fast.

If you look to the other end of the wire and the safety platform there, you're on your way.

You can check this out a bit more safely by riding a bicycle.

If you see a pothole and you watch the pothole, in you go for a bump.

Look past the pothole to where you want to actually end up riding and you will easily miss the hole.

Assumptions have a profound effect upon what happens to us.

Most of the rich people I know went broke more than once first.

What they did not do was go broke and then fix their attention on what they lost.

Just a personal observation I wanted to share.

"It listed career avenues by average intelligence. Guess whose career was at the top of the list?"

I looked up a few studies because it's fun. I don't know if I looked at the same study. One chart said it's mathematical scientists at the top. And another using a slightly different measure of IQ said pharmacists.

I was guessing the president.

I just know a lot of people who did in fact get fired. Not everyone, but a lot of people.


"Assumptions have a profound effect upon what happens to us."

I totally agree, but I think there are other things that are at work besides assumptions, some in your control, some maybe not so.

This happened to me once. Except the friend that spilled the drink on the laptop had four legs and a wagging tail.

All three were my wife's properties and she learned the lesson... no drinks in the same room as laptops.

By the way, a liquid spilled on a laptop can fry the mother board, but the information stored in the hard drive can be easily recovered.

Thank you, for sharing this valuable information, Magister Nemo.

Hail Satan!

True, but with any luck (and some quick action) it might not come to that.

Some things for everyone to keep in the back of your mind, in preparation for that moment when you suddenly find yourself in the "holy shit it spilled right into the laptop's keyboard" situation.

Step One. POWER OFF. IMMEDIATELY. Electricity plus liquid equals Bad Things, so kill the power -- pull the power cord, and press and hold the power button until it turns off. Yes, you will lose your unsaved work. You'll live. And with a little luck, so will your laptop.

Step Two. As quickly as you can (simultaneous with step one, if you can manage it), turn the laptop face-down and let the liquid start draining out. Worry about mopping up the mess later -- seconds matter here. Flip that thing NOW, before the beverage works its way below the keyboard to the cicuit boards and components below.

Step Three. Yank the battery, if possible, just to be on the safe side. (You can't pull the battery on Apples without dismantling the whole thing, so in that case just hope for the best.)

Step Four. After it dries completely, you're at the point where you have to decide whether to take the risk of starting it up again, or to get it looked at professionally first. If what spilled was water or unsweetened tea, you'll probably be okay to just resume working, although that isn't 100% guaranteed. If it was something sugary, you may need a replacement keyboard unit, or at least a good cleaning. (Try the keys out -- are they sticky?) But if you're really unlucky, a drop of something made it down to a vital circuit board, and left a residue of something conductive between exactly the wrong traces, and if you power it up again, you'll let the Magic Blue Smoke out and kill the whole thing.

I've only had to deal with this situation once -- at the office I once saw an entire mug of (unsweetened!) tea get dumped into a laptop keyboard by a careless movement. Everything was perfectly fine once it all dried out, but I must admit I was really holding my breath that first time I turned it back on.

-Chess

My experience aligns with what Magister Nemo says. When I was learning to drive, my dad always said not to look at the ditch when driving because that is where you will go. My own experience is that when the road has dividers or pylons that are close to my lane and I focus on the divider, I get dangerously close to side-swiping them. It is also my experience that when I expect something to happen (and believe it will - not just expect it and also expect it to fail), it does.

I actually would enjoy being laid off from my job and have 9-10 months of paid leisure. But I expect I'll be one of the last people there left to turn off the lights. So, I suspect it will be the latter.

Rich people don't know how to be poor and don't expect to be poor. If you watch extremely rich people crash and burn financially, it seems they bounce back and are rich again (eg. Donald Trump). They expect to be rich, they only know how to be rich, they can only be rich in the long-term. The same is true for poor people. A rich person loses it all temporarily and gets it all back. A poor person wins the lottery and is poor again in a year. It is too frequent for me to ignore.

I'd like to add to this too, once you have it flipped over go get some electronic cleaner, I'd recommend keeping some around incase something like this happens. This will help prevent the stickiness if it's a sugary drink and might save your keyboard (on mac laptops it's a couple hundred bucks to replace the keyboard)

Why hasn't the spiller been making at least small payments towards the damage? Were they hoping that the owner would forget it?

However your assumptions are under your control and as they program you with regard to how you perceive the world (Selective Perception), this is very important.

You want to see the answers and not merely the problems.

"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."
-Epictetus

You are most welcome.