Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: When Is Healthy Green Tea Not Good for Your Legal Nurse Consulting Business? When It’s Spilled Into Your PC!

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who uses a laptop will one day face the peril of having their coffee, lemonade, margarita or healthy green tea spilled onto their laptop computer. It will never be on purpose and it will be an unpleasant surprise that comes at the worst possible time (Don’t they always?). How you react and how quickly you react may make the difference between life and death for your legal nurse consulting PC. ICU nurses will have an advantage over the rest of us, but today’s Tuesday Tech Tip will help to level the playing field, while still allowing for a successful resuscitation. Legal nurse consultants who are desktop users may only end up with a sticky mouse or sticky keyboard, both easy to replace. If you’ve somehow managed to spill liquid into the case of your desktop computer, well my CLNC^® amigo, you’ve got more problems than just a wet PC. Instead, I’m going to focus on laptop users.

First of all, move quickly. This is important. Don’t worry about extracting an apology or pound of flesh from the spiller. As the spillee, the first thing to do is unplug the flow of power to your laptop. If you’re plugged into the power adaptor, pull that plug immediately (yank hard). Then flip the PC over and pull out all batteries. There’s no time for niceties such as closing programs and saving the data for that legal nurse consulting report you were writing. If you take any time to save your data you may lose your laptop (think short-circuit, sparks, fire, big Hollywood explosion).

As soon as all power sources are disconnected, pull out any removable components, CD/DVD drives, flash cards, USB devices, Internet cards, etc. Now tilt the laptop over to drain out the offending liquid. Tilt it toward you to keep the liquid from running into the screen/display. If you’ve got an open port or slot such as a PCMCIA or lock slot, drain the liquid from that slot. Then while keeping the laptop tilted, wipe off the outside with a soft, dry towel. If you spilled your drink onto the screen, use a screen cleaning solution such as Monster iClean and a microfiber cloth to wipe it off. That was the easy part. Depending upon your drink of choice, you could be in good or bad shape. The next steps depend on what was spilled onto your laptop, how much was spilled and how deeply it penetrated.

If you’re a legal nurse consultant who drinks unsweetened drinks such as healthy green tea or water, you’re in better shape than the rest. If your cup contained sugar, lemon, high fructose corn syrup, cream or other organics, you’re in for a tougher time. Your next step if you dare, is to take the case off your laptop and lift the keyboard up to view the circuit board. If you don’t dare, you may still be okay, depending on what was spilled. Put away the hair dryer and can of compressed air – they won’t help right now and can only cause more damage at this point. Instead, prop the keyboard up so air can circulate around it. In the unlikely event it was simply water or green tea without any sort of sugar or organics you can just put the system in a warm, dry room preferably in the sun and let it dry for a couple of days (consider having to go without a laptop as punishment for letting liquids get near it).

Finally, after it’s had a chance to dry, reassemble it and turn it back on. If the CLNC^® gods and goddesses are smiling it should work just fine. While you’re waiting, you can consider contacting the insurance company that covers your legal nurse consulting hardware or the computer’s manufacturer (or even American Express if it is a covered purchase under their replacement plan) to see if it’s covered by insurance or warranty. You may wish to do this before you disassemble it but this is one of those cases where I believe it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.

In the more likely event that you spilled your super-mocha-double-whipped cream latte, Jolt Power Cola or frozen margarita (woo-hoo!), we’ve got some more steps to take. While your computer is disassembled and drying, go to your local RadioShack^® and buy a can or bottle of electronic circuit cleaning solution or circuit board cleaner. You may first want to spray some of this on a soft cloth and run it over some part of your laptop’s plastic case that isn’t visible to see if it causes discoloration (they often do). Then take your laptop outdoors (if it’s dry weather) or into a well-ventilated area, tilt it and flush it out with the electronic cleaning solution. This should dissolve the organics and wash them out. Then put the laptop back in the warm dry space and let it dry for a couple of days before you try turning it back on.

If it still doesn’t work, you can take it to a local computer repair shop and have them try and save the hard drive (they’re sealed), thus saving the data on that drive. They can load your data into a new computer or try and wash out the old laptop like you did, but with the skills necessary to further disassemble it. In the end, it may be necessary to destroy the computer to save it (well, at least the data).

In the meantime, always, and I do mean always, whether you’re working on a legal nurse consulting project or just living la vida loca as a CLNC^® consultant in your Second Life^®, keep liquids an arm’s length away from your electronics. You may be able to postpone the inevitable as long as possible, but like death and taxes, a spill is going to happen. Whether you react like an ICU nurse or an office nurse will make all the difference in the world.

Keep on techin’ (dryly),

Tom