oh, laptop.

The drive is dying (probably for good this time) and the battery is dead (really most sincerely dead) and the touchpad is behaving like a cranky old man who won't admit he's gone deaf ("no I didn't hear you ask me to do that why are you yelling at me?") and they keyboard's gone mushy, and even upgrading the innards hasn't done more than stave off the inevitable. I'd be a lot more upset about all this except for the fact that I bought it in March 2011.

Five years of daily writer-use, being dragged around the country (and some of Canada and Europe). I've written at lest ten books on this thing, and I don't even want to think about how many short stories, emails and editorial letters, much less the amount of internet usage this thing has seen.

Do I want to spend $$$ on replacing it? Nope. But it decided to crash twice yesterday, while I'm on the last pass of deadline, and that reminded me that this is my work tool, my livelihood. Better to replace it under my control than have to do a panicked run to the Apple store because it died the final death mid-project...

Also, this maybe gives me the opportunity to go down to Portland and buy it there, saving myself sales tax.... (and having lunch with the Portlanders.  Hi, Portlanders!)


Meanwhile, a pullquote for the new book: “The devil runs an honest game,” he said, almost to himself. “But that doesn’t mean someone else can’t cheat.”

Yeah, that'll do.