days and acquisitions.

so summer started last week. i was going to post in celebration of the solstice, but life started sucking. let's just say, i hate cars and need more sleep.

today is his birthday. so, logically, i got a new cellphone.

work with me here.

along with both cars breaking down last week, my cellphone also started to break. someone thought it would be neat to design a phone where one button handles both the select and cancel features. this is great, right up until it starts to detach itself, and your phone ends up in an infinite select-cancel-select-cancel loop.

as i think i've posted before, i'm very picky about my cellphone interfaces, and when faced with the necessity of replacing my phone, i couldn't help but go back to nokia. now i have too much phone. it has wifi. it browses the web. it text messages. it syncs (wirelessly!) with my mac (after downloading the appropriate plugin). but it's super-thin and not that big and actually fits comfortably in my pocket. i have joined the twenty-first century. or something. but damn, i love having a full qwerty keyboard back. don't let best buy sync your contacts for you, btw. i had to delete them all, download them from my old phone onto my mac, and sync them with the new phone. i don't know what software or device best buy uses, but it rendered my phonebook an incomprehensible garble with every single phone number categorized as "mobile." (note to nokia/symbian: have you ever considered letting someone re-categorize numbers along with just editing them?)

but it is synced and happy and useable now. and charging.

lest you think he was bereft on his birthday, he has received much birthday cash and bought new clothes. but clothes are not nearly as interesting as electronics ;)

return.

macbook is back. it is also now running leopard with time machine so hopefully, if it ever dies again, restoring it willbe significantly simpler. i believe in backups, but backups are infinitely easier if they are done automatically by the computer itself.

applecare, btw, is worth every penny. not only did it take 2 days (not counting the weekend), but they also gave me a whole new topcase because the old one had cracked and the mouse button was coming unseated.

now to set up backups on my windows box.

insewerance.

my mac is dead :(

well. not deaddead. but this morning while i was checking email, the harddrive started clicking, and when i rebooted it, i got the helpful folder-with-question-mark icon.

however, i have applecare on it, so all it took was a brief phonecall and a walk through the tech support script (they insisted i boot from a cd and see if the disk utilities included would find the drive), i have a support number and a shipping box on its way. he estimates i should have the mac back by friday or monday at the latest.

also luckily, everything was backed up, although in various places (photos, for example, are all still on the sd card in the camera). i need to get more assiduous about running my backup script. my excuse for not running it yesterday and almost losing a 7 page document (i emailed it to someone) is that i was also trying to not throw up at the time.

in the meantime, i have my windows box, and am now more than ever glad i bought that kvm.

they're even going to fix my mouse button.