Flashes of Panic

My laptop is away, and I don’t expect to get it back until tomorrow, at best—maybe even Friday.

The CD drive started making a horrible shrieking noise a few weeks ago, and rattled when the machine was shaken gently. I figured that was probably the end of the drive, which (unfortunately) croaked with a disk inserted.

I had to shop around a bit for the repair. The last place I took it admitted that they were so backed up that it would be ten days before they could even look at it, let alone order replacement parts. I didn’t want to be without the machine (which still works, if you don’t need an optical drive,) for so long, so I contacted a local shop which we’ve sometimes used here at the office. They were inclined to just order a new drive without needing to look at the thing, so I agreed to a drive upgrade (I’ll be able to burn DVDs now, should I ever want to,) and a memory upgrade (a bit more than twice the RAM, which should keep it kicking for at least another year.)

The parts were in yesterday, so today I dropped off the machine. Now I’m completely offline at home. I’m looking forward, I think, to an internet-free evening or two. I wonder what I’ll do with them.

Now Playing: Close My Eyes from Live Light (France, 11/1994) by Ride