Bother. I just got my brand-spanking new 15 inch PowerBook G4 yesterday, and already I have to send it in for repairs. Damn CD combo drive sounds, in the rather apt words of the Apple Support rep, like a dirt bike. Sounds like a balance problem to me.

The bad news is that it has to go in for repairs. The good news is that they overnight a box to you so you can overnight it back to them, free of charge. When they’re finished doing the repairs, they overnight it back to you. The overall turnaround time, in my experience, is less than that of getting an on-site repairman to clear a place on his calendar, figure out where you live, get to your house, look over your computer, figure out that he doesn’t have the right replacement parts on him (despite the fact that you told the repair dispatcher exactly what needed to be replaced), come back two days later and repair your computer.

So my computer will go out tomorrow, leaving me with a whole weekend with only my three-year-old PowerBook G4 laptop and my four-month old desktop Dual-2GHz Power Mac G5 blowtorch with which to work. I may not see the thing again for as many as five days.

*Sniff* Can’t continue….tears of inconsolable loss shorting the keyboard….

Don’t bother wishing you could kick me in the ass. I’ve done it for you already. Kicking yourself in the butt, by the way, is hard on the ol’ hip socket.