Ah yes, living the decadent life! Right now I am reclining in bed, stuffed with Thai food, editing poetry– scratch that, attempting to edit poetry because I am on my 12″ PowerBook and it can barely load a webpage, let alone maneuver around word processing.  Open Mail.app and the spinning beach-ball of doom appears. This makes me sad; my trusty PowerBook and I have been together for over 5 years.

What I want not to want for Christmas this year is a replacement laptop of a new MacBook, but it is so shiny and lovely and fast. Perhaps I will treat myself with one if I get into grad school. I just submitted another application over the weekend, so here’s hoping.

The heat radiating from this thing is lulling me to sleep. Here I go, where visions of Apples will dance through my head.

I didn’t think this day would ever come.

Thanks to Mark/Space’s Missing Sync, my T-Mobile Sidekick II now syncs with my PowerBook’s iCal and Address Book.

The timing on this is particularly excellent, as I spent an hour organizing my Hipster PDA last night, complete with index cards, colored labels and a pocket Moleskine memo-pockets holder.

I keep glancing over at my Sidekick, as if, now that it is as functional as it was advertised when I bought it, I expect it to explode.

For my fellow compulsive correctors of iTunes info: “This program takes songs that you’ve chosen in your iTunes Library, that have incorrect or missing information for Title, Artist or Album, and then uses the sound of each song to match it with the correct information maintained in the MusicBrainz Database.”

The best part of this program is that it’s called iEatBrainz.

If you are running Panther (OS X 10.3), read and follow these instructions right now. Apple will undoubtedly release an update for this eventually, but you should protect yourself in the interim. This Wired article has more information.

Update! The brand-new Paranoid Android from the wondrous Unsanity is another option. From their website: “Note: Paranoid Android is designed to shield you from a different exploit approach than described in the recent Wired article and other sources (we do not disclose the details of the exploit method publicly, but Apple has been notified of the issue). However, it will aid you with the above mentioned exploit as well.” Let’s hope so!

After several unsuccessful attempts with iChat AV and our iSights, FunkyPlaid and I got a full audio/video chat going. And damn, once we had iChat configured to use the iSight microphones and limited the bandwidth to 500 Kbps, the quality was excellent.

If friendships had credits, ours would have to thank both LiveJournal and Apple.

Sacred feces! I have burned my first CD of music. My very first! I have never had my own CD burner before my 12″ PowerBook. I was sparked into action by my friend Fonta needing to hear a song I’d like her to sing for me someday (Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust”). So I bought some CD-R discs after work today, then purchased the Ella Fitzgerald version from the iTunes Music Store, and put it as the first track on my legendary cheesy love songs playlist. Then I inserted a blank disc, hit the “Burn Disc” button, and it burned the whole thing in seven minutes. I’m beside myself with glee.

Off to Brina’s now, with my new CD o’ Cheese in the car stereo. Life is so very good.

Tentacles is still non-functional; I suspect it is a monitor issue and not a motherboard one, which is good. And then again not good, because I’m going to need help taking the monitor into the Emeryville Apple Store. It’s just too damned unwieldy and heavy for me to do it by myself.

With the inheritance from my grandmother I recently received, I decided to purchase a 12″ PowerBook. This has been an exercise in stupidity. The first problem was that my Visa debit card has a daily spending limit that is under the cost of the PowerBook. I called my bank to ask them to increase the limit for this one purchase, and they refused. I immediately called Apple to let them know I would be sending in a cashier’s check instead, which they agreed to happily, as long as it was within 7 calendar days. Great! I had plenty of time. Lunchtime today was the first chance I had to go to my bank to get the cashier’s check and send it off. I returned to work, and discovered that I had received an email informing me that my order had been cancelled because I hadn’t paid for it.

Buh.

All I want to do is buy a new computer. How hard can this be?

The best part is that now my conscience is smirking and saying, “See, you didn’t deserve a new computer, anyway!” O, how I would love to bitch-slap my conscience.

So Tentacles (rhymes roughly with “Hercules”), my Power Mac dual-450Mhz-processor G4, went to the hospital yesterday. He’s having some power issues, namely not turning on when he’s supposed to, and shutting down without warning. After extensive in-home diagnostics, I decided it was time to admit him to the Apple Store hospital. I’ll find out Monday if he can be fixed or if I should save my money to replace him.

Replacing Tentacles. I’m bummed just thinking about it, but I guess I have to entertain the possibility. Since there’s no way I’m going to afford a Power Mac G5, I thought about saving my money for a 12″ PowerBook. My mom just got herself one, and I’ve fiddled around with it a little. It’s small and sturdy and fast and has Bluetooth built-in. These are all good things.

At any rate, I still have Gillian, my Blueberry clamshell iBook, so I won’t be computerless. Just Sims-less, Photoshop-less, iChatAV-less, Myst-less, Tropico-less …

Step 1 of hotrodding my iBook is complete; my new battery arrived in the mail today. It is fully charged and in Gillian. I get to take Gillian to Chicago!

Steps 2 and 3 involve upgrading the hard drive and upgrading the RAM. If I don’t find the right RAM, I might not be able to do Step 3. Still, this is so cool.

See, Stephanie, Gillian’s in great hands!