Back in Beijng my laptop decided to stop working. I’d hit the power button, a few of the LEDs would flash, and nothing. No POST.

I then removed the batteries, the hard drive, and the memory, and tried booting using one DIMM and the power cable. It worked!

I moved the DIMM to a different slot. It worked. Cool. Probably a memory problem.

I tried the second DIMM in the second slot. It worked. Eh?

I tried the second DIMM in the first slot. Okay… this works, too.

I eventually added the hard drive, the second DIMM, and both batteries, and that seemed to work, too. I sealed it up, and boom, no POST.

I took that thing apart and put it back together again for hours and never got it to POST consistently. More often than not, I’d get nothing. I figured there was something broken somewhere on something expensive, and rather than fix a 2 year old laptop for a few hundred dollars or more, I’d get a new one.

I tried getting it to boot a few more times while in China and Korea, but finally gave up. I knew the hard drive was still good, so I could get my old data off the machine at the very least.

—

Jack: Was it ticking?
Airport Security Officer: Actually throwers don’t worry about ticking ’cause modern bombs don’t tick.
Jack: Sorry, throwers?
Airport Security Officer: Baggage handlers. But, when a suitcase vibrates, then the throwers gotta call the police.
Jack: My suitcase was vibrating?
Airport Security Officer: Nine times out of ten it’s an electric razor, but every once in a while…
[whispering]
Airport Security Officer: it’s a dildo. Of course it’s company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo… always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo.
Jack: I don’t own…
[Officer waves Jack off]

—

Well, son of a gun. My computer works. It booted right up when I pulled it out of my suitcase.