Anyway, I was at the Office 2.0 conference today, where I was giving a little presentation on the Techdirt Insight Community, and about an hour before the presentation, I went to find a quiet place to practice the presentation… and discovered that my brand new laptop wouldn’t work. I knew something was wrong when the “sleep” light wasn’t lit. I started to get worried when I plugged in the laptop and the battery light didn’t light up. Then I noticed that even though the machine had been asleep, it was really really hot. Pushing the power button did nothing. No lights were on and nothing seemed to get them to turn on. I pulled out the battery and put it back in and that did nothing as well.

So I called up IBM support and explained the situation. The guy on the other end then let me in on the secret power button code to revive your dead Thinkpad. After assessing the situation (totally dead laptop) he warned me: “Okay, this is going to sound totally bizarre, but I want you to give this a try…” He then had me unplug the AC adapter and take out the battery. Then, you push the power button 10 times in a row at one second intervals. Next, you push and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Then you put the battery back in and push the power button… and she lives. The computer came back, good as ever.

I asked the guy what the power button pushing incantation did and he said “static discharge” so apparently there was some sort of static that caused a short or something. I tried to get the guy to explain in more detail what happened, but he said “dude, you know as much as I do… but your machine is working.”

And so it is.

So, if you happen to have a Thinkpad that suddenly drops completely dead for no reason, try the power button trick.

Forget up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. This little code is now the coolest “cheat” code I know…

I haven’t been to Toronto since then (even if I apparently have semi-famous cousins with theaters named after them who live there) but as if to mentally punish me with guilt for being a part of the taunting crew (and don’t ask me about when we taunted the Expos mascot Youppi to the point that he punched a little kid…) I’ve discovered that Canadians have been universally, fantastically, stunningly, incredibly nice consistently throughout my life. Having not been north of the border in about 20 years, it’s nice to find out that those in Canada are just as amazingly friendly as those I’ve been dealing with south of the border.

I spent all last week at the Mesh Conference in Toronto and it was fantastic. I’ll admit that the thought had crossed my mind to bail out and attend the All Things D conference once I found out they overlapped, but, I’d already agreed to go to Mesh, and it seemed like an opportunity to meet different people with different perspectives rather than the same old crowd. Indeed, that’s pretty much what happened. Perhaps it was because I knew so few people there, but I found that I ended up having an awful lot of really fantastic conversations and meeting many more people I hope to stay in touch with than at other conferences.

Getting a chance to finally meet Rob Hyndman and Mathew Ingram (two organizers of the event) in person was simply great — though, I don’t recall saying anything deserving of the amazingly kind words that each said about meeting me. I’d already met Mike McDerment, and didn’t have much of a chance to speak with Stuart or Mark (the other organizers). However, there were a ton of fascinating individuals and entrepreneurs who I got to spend time with. I certainly can’t go through the whole list of name, but it was great to finally meet folks like Cynthia Brumfield and Tony Hung. And, Rob’s introduction to Pema Hegan, founder of Gigpark, not only resulted in a great conversation on its own, but then to attending a regretfully fast (second fastest game in the majors this year) Blue Jays/White Sox game with his co-founder, Noah Godfrey (which, in turn, resulted in another fantastic conversation with Noah). And, while at the game, I got to talking with Patrick Lor, which turned into hanging out at the hotel bar with Patrick and Austin Hill. And, by “hanging out,” I mean an incredibly enlightening wonking out on the finer points of economic theory (including plenty to think about for followups on my series of ramblings).

That was only a taste. All in all, a totally worthwhile event. My only regret was not having a chance to chat with (or even meet) Ethan Kaplan, who about six or seven people told me I absolutely needed to talk with. Conveniently, his assigned seat at the “speakers and sponsors” dinner was right next to mine, but it turned out that the part of Ethan Kaplan was played by someone else that night (though, my dinner conversations with a bunch of folks were also fantastic). Tony Hung fears that his brain would explode if Ethan and I ever “faced off,” so at least we spared Toronto the trouble of having to deal with that… but hopefully, I’ll get a chance to catch up with Ethan some other time.