Singularity

My Powerbook rarely leaves my side. It's had a rough life for the 2.5 years it's been in service. I purchased the machine just before my second MacWorld (2001 NY) through a discount program that the Apple Solution Expert program, of which I was a member (and which has since changed names to the Apple Consultants Network) for the bargan price of $1975, shipped. My Pismo G3/500 was worth about $2000 at the time, and my mother graciously agreed to buy it from me for the price of its replacement.

The PowerBook suffered it's first and worst ever damage at that MacWorld. It's second week in service, it was dropped by coat check at the ASE member dinner, denting the bottom case in the front left corner and cracking the magnesum frame in a half dozen places. Of course I didn't notice this until the next day. Since then, the cracks had spread a bit, and a few new had shown up, but the machine was completely servicable. It's RAM was upgraded to 512MB early in the fall semester of that year which has sufficed ever since. In the summer of 2002 the too-small 10 gig drive was replaced with a 20 in a shuffle that also upgraded my father's iBook from 4 gigs to a usable 10.

Most recently, I was suffering from some very strange lock-ups. OS and boot device did not matter - it seemed it was kernel panicing without being able to tell me. I was also loosing video on boot if I didn't go through some acrobatics. Off to Apple it went, and came back with a new logic board, DVD drive, bottom case, top case and bottom frame. Just like new aside from two years' worth of screen marring. I also just got off the phone with Apple about yet another keyboard. I don't know if I got a new keyboard along with the rest of the work that was just done, but that would make the difference between this being my 3rd and 4th new keyboard - I seem to loose keys every 6-8 months. this time it was 6-Y-H-N-space. I'm using my previous dead keyboard now which is missing the tilde, plus/equals and open bracket/brace keys - much less annoying for daily use. Along with a new battery those should be here right around 1/28.

The DVD drive they gave me in that service was a dud - it woulnd't spin. It went back in and inexplicably got another logic board - which has since gone bad (top RAM slot is bad). My newest battery has also shit itself, and the physical assembly has recently started allowing the batteries to disconect. So Real Soon Now it'll be off to Apple again.