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The laptop is kaput. I spent a fair amount of time working on it yesterday (one of the side-effects of which is that my younger brother got hit by a car) and when I got all the parts back in place and tried to power it on, still nothing. So, something must have gone bad where I can’t see it, and even the long shot didn’t work. So now I definitely am laptop-less. But some of the laptop can be recovered:

I can use the Airport card in my iMac, which will be handy once I have a second computer again.

I can buy an enclosure and turn the 30Gb HD into an external firewire drive, not only recovering the data, but the use of the $300 drive I bought just under a year ago.

I can sell the AC Adapter on eBay; they go for between $40 and $70 plus S/H.

ummm… I can … yeah. Burn the rest. With fire.

I don’t know. I’m going to Pine now. Bye!

But have you ever scratched your eyeball? Man, it’s like hell. Or maybe it just reminds me of Hell.

Today’s the last day in PHX for a while. I’ll make some calls around, but it looks like good old-fashioned not-much-happennin’. I’m thinking (and I like this thought because it only means a $35-$75 fix instead of an entire new laptop) that I may have burned out my AC adapter. I took the voltmeter to it last night, and assumming my head isn’t full of squashed flies, there’s no current coming out of the thing. Which sure would explain why the laptop doesn’t turn on. If I can, I’m going to try to get out to an Apple Store of some kind and see if they can just plug it in with one of their AC adapters to see if that’s the problem. Anyone know what busses run through the Biltmore area?

It feels like there is actual cat hair between my eyelid and my eyeball. Except on fire. That antihistamine I just took better take effect soon, or I’ll have to tear a hole in space-time to get somewhere I’ll be okay to get around.

I have used more Windows XP in the last couple of days than in the last eight months. It’s frustrating, all the things it doesn’t do right. I’m thinking what needs to be done is someone needs to write a virus that infects people’s computers, then senses when people are frustrated with Windows and pops up with the Apple web page showing how Apple computers don’t have the specific problem they were having, and suggests they order a Mac. Of course, I also think there should be a way for ‘switchers’ to turn in their CDs and licenses for the PC versions of software they use in exchange for the Mac version when they switch, for maybe a small, nominal fee covering the cost of the CD and Manuals themselves. The biggest reason I hear from people about switching isn’t with anything Apple is doing, but with the cost of re-buying all their software. (For those of you who just pirated your PC software anyway and complain that there aren’t good pirating options for Macs, either grow up and pay for your software or take the time to learn how we do it.)

No, I’m going to go fight with BitPass. Wish me luck!

Okay, so I woke up this morning, checked my email, checked my website, read a little newspaper, and ate breakfast. Then I got on the bus and rode down to Tempe. I shoped at the Zia’s here (Damn them! They had 5 movies and a CD I wanted! I could only put 5 things on hold, so I bought the new Liz Phair CD and unless something changes my mind will go back for the DVDs before I get on the bus tonight.) for a little while, then wandered over to ASU. I looked in the ASU Computer Store to see that they didn’t have any iPods left in stock (silly people not stocking enough iPods for the new semester), and to wander around in that college crowd. I always get this … great? feeling from wandering around on a crowded college campus. I like it. Sure, I never really feel like I ‘fit in’, but … I’m still there, a part of the energy of the place. And I like it. And then Iain called to say he wouldn’t be seeing me today. Which I kinda knew, what with his two jobs and a class miles away. But he reminded me that Mo works right there on campus, so I wandered over and shocked Mo by knowing where he works. Where his office is and where he sits. He wouldn’t believe that I’d been there before, so I guess I must just have dreamt it. Accurately to reality. So Mo and I chatted for a little while, though we didn’t quite get much into capitalism. But in 30 to 60 days I should have a write-up at least for … well, he knows. It’s hard to explain without getting into it.

Then, I went up into the Hayden Library Stacks and wrote a page of a letter to a friend of mine before my lunch date with Jen. Jen and I went and enjoyed two-for-one Fatburgers with a coupon I was handed wandering around ASU. They do silly things like that in the first week of the semester. And then I headed down to Mill’s End where I planned on working on my novel until … I was done or it was time to get on the bus. I bought a large hot Chai tea with a shot of Caramel (highly recommended) and got a glass of ice water to drink, what with the walking around in the desert all morning. I set up my laptop and started ripping/listening to my new Liz Phair CD, and wrote about half a page of new material before I spilled half a glass of ice water across my table and my laptop and my lap. And it was a minute or two before the water seeped in enough to shut the laptop down, but then it wouldn’t come on again, no matter how dry I could get it. So, I tried airing it out, and I walked off to the post office to post a letter I failed to post yesterday (to the same friend), and when I came back it still wouldn’t power up. So, hopefully tomorrow or next week, when it’s dried enough, It’ll power on and I’ll be able to use it again. I’d hate to have destroyed my laptop with ice water. Ice is evil, I keep saying it, and people don’t believe me, but it attacked my laptop and now I’m computer-less.

So, I have a hard copy of the stuff I’m re-writing, but I failed to bring any notebook paper, so after I leave here, I’m going to go buy a pad of paper and go find a quiet place to work (maybe a library at ASU. Perhaps the law library, because it’s silly) and I’m going to try to work on it on paper. The new material is no problem, but it seems extra tedious to re-write the 75 pages or so by hand when (if I had a working computer) I could do the editing on the computer. There’s not a whole lot I need to change about it. I’ll see what all I can work out with paper and margins and clever references and notations.

Anyway, so there’s this new place on Mill, where Cafe Boba used to be, called Lan Gamz. It’s a bunch of Wintel PCs connected together and to the internet and you can play games and surf the web and whatever, and they’re charging $4/hour right now. They set you up with an account and they say they last forever, so if I only use half an hour today, I can come back any time and use the other half hour I just bought. Well, considering I’ve already been sitting here writing for half an hour, thats probably how this will go.

Anyway, yeah. Fun day! Not too stressed out. I think I’ve made a bargain with myself about the iPod thing, too. I think I’ve decided that I can NOT buy the iPod for a while. I think I’ve decided that I will buy the iPod only as soon as my book sales are enough to cover it. At my current projected profit per copy of the book, I should be able to get an iPod with only 40 or 50 copies sold. Of course, if I can somehow find 2500+ people who want to buy my book, I can go the VW New Beetle route. Whee! Heck, if I can get 250+ people to buy it (Hah! If only I had a marketing department!) I could afford a new laptop. Maybe one that drinks water without dying. (Hah!)

Anyway, yeah. So that should push me to get the novel polished to a wonderful read. The iPod fever fed through my novel-writing Mania.

Okay, 40 minutes now. I’m going.

Tuesday looks to be a day in Tempe. I’m going to try to head out as soon as I wake up and spend all day there. I’ve already got a lunch date, but if you’re going to be in or near downtown Tempe tomorrow, and would like to get together, please call or email me. Of course, if you email me after 7 or 8 in the morning tomorrow, I may not know about it until late tomorrow night or Wednesday.

Phone is best.

Anyway, I’m going to try to get some work done on my novel, down at Mill’s End Cafe, and with luck I’ll be able to get through the end of the world and the next twenty-five thousand words by the end of the afternoon. Maybe I’ll go see a movie with someone after work, or just hang out for a while. I’ll call around. Of course, if I can’t get a ride home, I’ve got to be on the last bus north by … 9PM, or I’m sleeping under the bridge.

So, that’s the vague plan for tomorrow. Nebulous, eh? But hey, there you go. I’m going to sleep.

Would you believe it? Just as I was coming off a common cold, I find myself infected with iPod fever. I just can’t get it out of my mind. Of course, being infected seems to attract money-saving offers.

You saw the first one, the $100 off an iPod with one-year audible.com subscriptions (Note: the cheapest audible.com subscription that qualifies works out to $180 for the year, the other is almost $240 for the year, so you’re just paying that $100 back over time… though you DO get the audio books and periodicals…).

Then there’s the one I got in the physical mail from one of my credit lines offering $25 off any purchase at the Apple store over $249 (iPods start at $299), which can be combined with my Education-for-Individuals discount of $30 and free shipping for a total of $55 actual savings if I buy it before the end of September with that particular credit line.

The fever is getting so bad that the new Pods Unite offer sounds pretty good, too. That one gives you a totally free iPod, a $100 credit at the iTunes Music Store, plus a special adapter designed to fit into a VW New Beetle, and more! The catch of course being that you have to buy a brand new VW New Beetle. (Base Prices start from $15,950 to $23,540 depending on which engine you want, and go up to… well, actually just $21,075 for the built-out diesel model I want.) Which … may be a little out of my price range, considering my current income level.

It’s burning me up. Burning up my conscious ability to stop myself from just ordering one. The only thing that stopped me from ordering one earlier today may have been my browser crashing. I have to assume my browser crashed for that very reason because, come on, it’s Safari, Apple’s browser. When does Safari crash? It must have known I shouldn’t go around spending hundreds of dollars with no idea how I’d pay it back? What would my father think of me if I just showed up one day with an iPod?

Yet at this rate, some day I’m going to have to get an iPod or simply face the physical meltdown of my brain. It’s been in my dreams for days now. Sometimes tiny iPods begin to dance across my vision, playing music and taunting me as I sit or work, music-free. Sigh. Time for bed. I’ve got to go have more dreams about tiny, shiny, portable music devices before I wake up in the morning for the drive down to PHX. Maybe I’ll buy myself an iPod with my birthday as an excuse. Did you know I’m changing demographics?