Hello, my name is Laurel, and I’m an Apple addict.

This time around, I sent in the MacBook to AppleCare for some repairs. I’d kind of let them accumulate, mostly because I never want to part with my laptop long enough to get it fixed, but the time had come. You see, I planned to give the laptop to The Inconvenience to use for law school, so it needed some AppleCare love before that could happen.

Off it went with the following:
- cracked bezel around the LCD/palmrests (defective plastic issue)
- iSight feedback noise related to lighting (defect)
- some keys no longer working (pretty sure that was my fault, and by ‘my’ I mean ‘the Girl Child’)
- coffee spilled on the bottom right corner of the LCD, which then wicked up INTO the LCD (definitely my fault)

I was expecting to be charged for the spill damage, at least, and sure enough I received an estimate asking me to authorize a $775 repair. ACK. No way we can afford that right now, especially since the laptop was still functional – just sorta stained.

I called AppleCare and explained to the first guy (a human being speaking first-language American English) I talked to that I needed them to just go ahead and fix the other stuff and skip the LCD. He said they couldn’t do that, but was kind of unclear on why, and said they needed to transfer me to the Tier 2 supervisor. Okey-dokey.

Enter Donald (another human being speaking first-language American English), my Person Of The Year. He explained that they can’t do a partial repair, because they test and re-warranty the computer’s condition when it leaves the facility. I, in turn, explained that I hadn’t known that, and sorry-for-the-sob-story-but… and told him why I was getting it fixed and that we really don’t have money for a $775 repair. Could he make an exception and just acknowledge somehow the LCD was no longer covered? He couldn’t do that, so I then asked if we could reduce the cost somehow.

(This is the part where Don becomes Person Of The Year.)

Don then said, “I will go ahead and make an exception for you, because I appreciate you being honest about spilling coffee on your computer. Most people send them in and pretend they don’t know what happened to them. So, thanks. I’ll authorize a full repair at no cost.”

I am sending Don a Christmas Card.

Oh, I didn’t mention the part where Apple had overnighted a box for me to send the MacBook to them, which was overnighted to them, and then overnighted back to me when the repair was done. I mailed it on Monday. It came back to me before noon today. Three-day turnaround.

When it arrived, I found:

- A new top case
- New bezels around the LCD and palmrests
- A new keyboard
- A new trackpad
- A repaired or replaced iSight (it’s not whining anymore)
- OS X 10.5!

That’s right, FREE OS UPGRADE. I had been dual-booting OS X 10.4 and Ubuntu, and they wiped the drive and installed 10.5. I don’t know if that was some Apple tech’s way of saying OS X > Linux, but whatever – I’m pleased as punch about it. I had gone to Ubuntu because 10.4 was getting so far behind the curve, and I couldn’t afford to upgrade to 10.5, so problem solved.

I. Love. Apple.

We’re also going to have a slight issue with The Inconvenience co-opting this for law school, methinks.

Well, we’re alive and well and holed up in the sticks of Californiastan. (My folks live in the country, thank goodness.) We shipped The Sister home on schedule on Tuesday, but The Girl Child and I aren’t due to leave until next Monday. I’m kind of thinking since we haven’t gotten on a plane yet, we won’t be getting on one at all. I can wear a surgical mask, but the kiddo can’t. And since my folks are planning on heading Idaho-way fairly soon, we may just stick around and drive.

I’m more than a little distressed by the whole thing – I didn’t want to rush home via plane and expose us to something we didn’t yet know the extent of, but obviously the longer I wait the more it’s likely to spread. I don’t want to be stuck here any longer than we have to be, but I also don’t care to engage in air travel. People are stupid.

Ammo situation sucks here, by the way. The best Wal-Mart could come up with in the way of .22LR was 50 rounds of CCI for $6.50 or something like that. K-Mart had nothin’. One of the local gun shops had half-bricks for $15. My dad finally believes me that reloading supplies can’t be had, either.

Oh, and for the record, the fam already owns land up in north Idaho and is working on long-term relocation. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Anyway, I don’t have anything really substantive to post, just wanted to let everyone know we’re well. Kind of stuck, but well. Grump, grump, grump.

So I’m in the PRC, right?

Guess what else is in the PRC? SWINE FLU!

In fact, there might be a case like… 30 minutes from where I’m at.

I would not be worried about this if it were two years ago, because I’m generally healthy as a horse and probably not a prime candidate for death by influenza.

My THREE MONTH OLD CHILD, on the other hand, probably shouldn’t be exposed to such things.

So, now I’m in a real pickle. I don’t want to be here with the flipping SWINE FLU, but I also don’t particularly want us to get on an AIRPLANE TO LEAVE THE PLACE WITH THE SWINE FLU.

I’m a little agitated, if you can’t tell.

As if I needed one more reason to convince me visiting this place is a generally horrible idea…

Hey, California-based family members: HURRY UP AND MOVE.

Garrrh.

The Inconvenience just received notice of his acceptance to UI Law, class of 2012.

The Inconvenience: “Don’t let him in! He’ll puke a noodle on your knee!”

EDITED TO ADD:

QOTD: Saturday morning afternoon:

The Inconvenience: “Babe? Can you get me some Advil and a glass of water?”

Soooooomebody’s getting oooooold…

The Inconvenience, on possible career paths if law school doesn’t pan out:

“I could start a museum. We need a real museum here. A museum about like… kickin’ ass.”

It’s April Fools’ Day.

(Fools’? Fool’s? Are we talking about a Fool’s Day or a Day for Fools?)

Anyway, don’t be a sucker. April Fool’s/Fools’ Day is only funny when I’m the one doin’ the foolin’ – like the time I convinced The Inconvenience I’d had a lesbian tryst with a friend while he was in Iraq.

Man, that was a good one.

…she screwed up.

Idaho Representative Shirley Ringo, that is.

I just fired off this email:

Rep. Ringo,

I was just reviewing the recently-passed Idaho midwifery licensing bill,
and am distressed to see you voted in favor of it.

I realize it’s too late to do anything about it now, but wanted to point
out a key factor that I hope you failed to consider, and didn’t
actually actively impose upon your constituents:

There are no doctors in Moscow that will attend a vaginal breech
birth. The only alternative for women seeking to deliver a breech baby
naturally, with a professional in attendance, was midwifery care. You
have now helped take that choice from us, and ensured the birth
experience for many Moscow women will be reduced to Cesarean section – a
procedure that often causes neonatal respiratory distress, difficult
recoveries for both baby and mother, damaged breastfeeding
relationships, difficult future pregnancies and births, and so on.

I delivered a healthy baby girl at home on January 10th of this year.
For several weeks in late pregnancy, she was breech. I would have chosen
to proceed with my homebirth had she remained breech. You have now taken
that choice from me when I have my next child. Since I do not believe in
submitting to major surgery when breech births with skilled
professionals have positive outcome rates comparable to vertex births, I
will be left with the option of fighting hospital staff while in labor,
birthing unassisted, or trying to find an illegally practicing midwife.

Which option would you choose, Rep. Ringo? What happened to my body, my
choice?

I fail to understand how a representative who believes I should be able
to terminate a pregnancy with an abortion does not believe I should have
equal control over my birth process. Safe, accessible abortions… but
not safe, accessible birth?

For the record, my midwife opposed the bill – so don’t bother telling me
it was the consensus of Idaho midwives. This bill was junk, pushed
through before the medical lobby could get the chance to outlaw
midwifery and homebirth completely. The midwives who worked on this bill
shot themselves in the foot, so as to avoid letting doctors pull the
trigger.

Rep. Ringo, you and I probably see eye-to-eye on very little
politically. That said, I thought I could trust you to stand up for
women’s choice. By voting to pass mandatory midwifery licensing, you
have proven I can’t trust you at all.

Laurel [Mylastname]
Moscow

Here’s the bill. It is a colossal bunch of crap and passed overwhelmingly. Midwives are now subject to an up-to-$1,000 yearly licensing fee. Considering the going rate for midwifery care around here is about $1,700, a $1,000 license is a big chunk o’ change. This bill will almost certainly put some smaller practices out of business.

In addition to the aforementioned outlawing of midwife-attended breech births, the bill also outlaws midwife-attended postdates (42+ weeks) births, multiple births, births with maternal BMI of 40+, vaginal birth after more than one c-section, and several other criteria. It also requires dual-care with a doctor for several conditions.

I also like the part where midwives are required to provide, as part of their initial informed consent materials, information about the procedures, risks, and benefits of homebirth. (Hey, at least they acknowledged there are benefits!) When I pre-registered at the hospital in case of an emergency transfer, I was not presented with any information about the procedures, risks, and benefits of hospital birth. Go fig.

Man oh man, very few things get me in such a tizzy as the government claiming ownership of my body. RAWR!

HA! I win.

I took the hard drive apart. Turns out three out of four of the bracket screws that keep the circuit board tight against the drive itself had worked themselves loose. (Fine Chinese craftsmanship, right there!) Thus, the connection between the board and the drive was loose, and the drive wasn’t getting power.

I replaced the screws, and she spun right on up. I rock.

I’m also running Ubuntu now. I tried Kubuntu briefly, but didn’t really like it. I’m going to OS X-ify my Ubuntu, anyway, and I know more about customising Gnome than I do KDE.

A couple of days ago, I decided to empty out my external hard drive so I could reformat it. I had three partitions (three different varieties) and I only wanted one HFS+. I carefully arranged everything on our computers, nearly running out of hard disk space on both, and did the reformat.

Then, I put everything back onto the external and deleted most of it off my computer to free up space. Music and SOME pre-2009 photos were backed up to The Inconvenience’s computer. ALL of my documents, and a good chunk of other pre-2009 photos were on the external – and only on the external.

The hard disk in the external doesn’t want to spin up now. I plug it in, the power light comes on, but no sign of spinny life. I am hoping this has something to do with a bracket screw coming lose in there – it’s been that way for a while, but it was running fine so I didn’t want to crack it open and fix it. Plus, I knew if I broke the seals on the drive it would void the warranty.

Well, turns out since I don’t have the receipt (and it might have been too long ago in the first place), I don’t have a warranty anyway. I’m going to go ahead and open the bitch up and hope it’s just a lose power connection. Hopey hope hope.

I’m also going back to Ubuntu, I think. Maybe Kubuntu. I can’t afford to upgrade to OS X 10.5 and I want a newer OS than 10.4, so back to free software I go. The big reason I gave up on it in favor of OS X was World of Warcraft; now that I’m not playing, the only things I’ll miss are one-click networking with the other Macs in my life (something I admittedly haven’t even explored for Ubuntu) and… I forget the other thing. Must not have been that great.

I’ve been trying 8.10 off a live CD, and it appears wireless is working out-of-the-box. Woot. That was another big reason I left Ubuntu last time.

OH MY GOD I need to turn off touchpad clicking. How do people stand it!? I keep hitting the damn thing as I type.

Pray for my hard drive.