Self diagnosis liquid spill

Please withhold judgement about my decisions about drinking around my macbook.

About a week and a half ago I spilled a small amount of beer on the right side of my keyboard, over the battery and hard drive. VERY little of it actually got inside the computer. It did not shut off immediately but I turned it off about 10 seconds later.

Fast forward a few days, apple store visit. I ask the genius to take a look inside. He says he checked my hard drive data and it is intact, and there are no signs of corrosion on the logic board, which makes sense because the spill was nowhere near there and it was in a bag of rice tilted the other direction within 10 minutes.

I bring it home and it won't turn on. I was able to charge the battery fully, so that is also functioning normally.

Fast forward to today and I bring it in again. They tell me its "impossible to really know" since apple has quality assurance stuff that they don't want to fix something and have it not be the issue. Thats cool for them, but I am fine with doing that.

So I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out what I can check myself. I don't care about my warranty and I've done work on macs before. I took apart my powerbook G4 to remove the faulty overheating sensor chip, and I'm handy with a soldering iron. I am pretty confident that this laptop seems to be fully functional and it could simple be a power button or a shorted connection.

Are there any guides I could look at or could someone start me in the right direction? If I have to buy a replacement top case I will, but right now I am thinking that is the worst case scenario

Edit: well I've answered my own question and since I don't see this specifically answered elsewhere on the sight I'm explain a bit. With a spill like mine that only gets in the keyboard and upper film of the top case, there is a chance the major parts of the laptop are intact. To check this you just need to open up the top case, disconnect the keyboard cable (pictured) and short the power pads with a paper clip or fork. The power pads on mine are the two larger silver "pads" directly to the left of the tiny capacitor looking things, which are to the left of the keyboard connector. It might take a little manuvering, the first time, all I had to do was short one of the pads, but I turned it off twice and each time the placement had to be a little different. But it does work.

I'm planning on buying a replacement keyboard and power button (the same piece) so I'll update this when i finish that.