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I spent today like any normal American does two days before Christmas: dashing madly about, picking up last minute gifts. I already knew what I wanted to get; I just hoped it was still available.
 I came home and spent most of the day working on my Why Web journals suck essay (yes, I really am writing it; one of the wonderful side benefits has been a renewed interest in journaling, in writing entries by hand in my sadly neglected paper journal, in reading entries and excerpts from others' journals, and so on), updating my journals page, and playing Mission: Thunderbolt. I played it for hours.
Then Donut started doing the whimpering death dance.
I am sneaking this entry in between freezes.
Every time the hard disk spins down, every time the cursor doesn't respond immediately, every time an application quits with "Error 3" or whatever, I think: This is, I've gotta reboot. I've started doing that when I'm using Darin's computer, I've noticed.
I have to call the Mac place to see if they'll be open the week between Christmas and New Year's. Pretty much the only time to bring it in. If they are but can't find anything (again), or they aren't, I don't know what I'll do. Start the new year with a flaky PowerBook?
Dammit, if only this were a problem several other owners had run across, so that the repair people could say, "Ah, that old problem."
Or if I hadn't made two huge hardware changes recently: adding more memory and upgrading to a PowerPC chip.
If only. If only.
So I'm bummed out, okay? I don't trust my computer.
The only time my car broke down was on Highway 5 (the freeway of choice for serial killers everywhere). It had signaled that something was wrong as I headed into Los Angeles to visit Allison and Adam by choking and spitting, even though it kept going. I took it to the Acura dealer in Valencia; he chalked it up to bad gas.
The car broke down outside of Bakersfield as I was driving home.
I ended up leaving my car in Bakersfield for a week, renting a car, driving home, and dealing with garage mechanics and the Bakersfield Acura people by phone. I cried a lot because it was so stressful. Darin and I drove down after a week to get my car and return the rental, and Darin drove most of the way back home because I was too nervous. Every time the car so much as hit a bump or made a noise I freaked out it's happening again, the car's not fixed, we're going to be stranded out here in the middle of nowhere.
I was wrong, of course; the Bakersfield Acura guys actually had fixed the car. But it took me some time to get over that apprehensive fear that it was going to happen again. I ended buying a cell phone to take with me constantly, so I would never be stuck by the side of a freeway again completely helpless.
This is how I feel with Donut right now. I save constantly and am always searching the screen for signs that it's gone kablooey again. You have to understand: I've never had problems with a Mac. Never. Plug it in, power it up, start typing.
And now this. It has taken me three restarts to write this entire entry. I am furious that there does not seem to be a repeatable problem, something that I can show the repairmen to say, Here is what causes the problem. Sometimes Donut works fine for a whole day, sometimes I cannot even get the chime that signals a successful reboot. It's as frustrating as hell if you want to write, and of course whenever my PowerBook is taken from me I want to write.
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