Jastef

So on Sunday, Stef and I took the kids to San Leandro to see Grandma Elsie, where's she's in a convalescent hospital recovering (rather well, I might add) from her hip surgery. We needed to get directions, so I grabbed my laptop to take with us. I never let the battery run out on my laptop, but this particular day I happened to do that, so I grabbed my DC inverter to run the laptop from the cigarette lighter in the van. Well, long story short, the inverter wouldn't light up and work, so I couldn't get power for my laptop. Worse, when we got home that night and I plugged it in and started using it, I started getting that little tingly feeling that indicates electrical current flowing through you. My laptop now pushes electrical current through me every time I touch the keyboard. Yuck! The repairs on the machine are going to be more than it's worth, and I need a laptop for my freelance work, so I decided to take my next paycheck for my contract work and use it to get a replacement. I was plotting to hold out for my MacBook Pro, but it looks like that'll have to wait a couple of months (in which time I'll give this new machine to Stef). So, here's the deal... OUT: Compaq v200z. IN: 15" Apple Powerbook G4 (Aluminum) running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4. The powerbooks are starting to come down in price to where it was practical to get one as a "cheap" replacement for my rather-piece-of-junky Compaq. I'm getting antsy -- going on a week without a usable laptop, which I've come to rely on more than I'd thought. Still, it's been a nice opportunity to take a small break from the breakneck work pace that usually consumes most of my commute.

And it gives me a chance to play with my other recent acquisition (I've been blessed with the opportunity to pick up a couple nice things lately): A Nintendo DS Lite that I snagged for cheap on eBay. I bought some cheap used games for it; New Super Mario Bros. arrived the same day as the DS, and I've been playing that in my free time on the train (as well as doing my devotions and reading some web dev books), and I've got Metroid Prime: Hunters showing up any day now, plus a little special surprise I'm getting for Stef. The DS is a fabuous little tool; the touch screen is rather neat (some cool minigames come with Mario) and I can see how the Wifi could be very useful when paired with Opera running on it for web browsing. The other thing that I really really would love to have is an organizer (calendar, todo list, etc) for it. There are homebrew solutions that require some hacking that I might try out, but it would be nice to have an officially supported tool -- even better would be if it integrated with Google Calendar and/or Gmail, but I guess that's just wishful thinking.

Anyway, I'm impatiently awaiting the arrival of my Powerbook. Aside from having a laptop again, it'll be the first really usable Mac that I'll be able to call mine (as opposed to a machine from work). Should be great!