Flashes of Panic

I’m probably not the only Powerbook owner in the world who’s lost one of the four rubber “feet” on the bottom of the machine. It’s a little thing, but hugely annoying at times. Because I lost the one attached to the battery, under the right front corner, when I try to work on any kind of flat surface, because the machine rocks back and forth depending on whether I have my right hand resting on the Powerbook or not.

I took it to our local Apple store back in the fall, but they didn’t have any spare “feet” to offer. I learned that I could work tolerably well by sticking a coin under the corner: nickels, T tokens, and one-yen coins are all exactly the right thickness (though the yen are the least expensive to forget when I stand up, if you ignore the import costs.)

I also did some web research, and discovered there’s a cheap fix for this. Tonight I remembered to grab a package of the things at Staples, and sure enough, I now have a non-rocking Powerbook. So even though his machine is (apparently) a TiBook, the process still works with 12” Aluminum models.

(Yeah, I saw the new MacBooks. Yeah, they look interesting, but I’m quite fond of this 12” size. I should buy a new machine while I can still get a student discount, so that gives me not-quite a year to get used to the idea of a larger, heavier (but faster!) computer. And that awful name.)

Now Playing: One Cigarette by Jim Bryson