Maxed out

No, not my damn credit cards, the iBook.

I can officially no longer jam anything else into the thing. If I want it to do more, I have to get a new one. It started life as just a regular old iBook: 256 meg of RAM, a 40Gb hard disk, and an ethernet connection. Over the last year or two, I've added a wireless card (without wireless a laptop isn't worth shit), another 512 meg of memory, retrofitted the factory Bluetooth module (not an easy mod) and now, replaced the older, slower, way-too-small hard drive with a faster, newer 100Gb Seagate.

There's nothing more to do with this machine.

The surgery to put anything fun in an iBook is unnecessarily difficult. To put the drive in, for example, you basically have to tear the machine apart, removing and replacing a total of around 20 screws. Compare and contrast with Toshiba and Dell, where you can pop a hard drive out of their recent models in about three minutes using one screw. Apple seems to like to make it hard to fuck with the insides of their machines, but as someone who grew up ignoring the sign on the back of your TV set:

WARNING: NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE. REFER ALL REPAIRS TO QUALIFIED SERVICE PERSONNEL

...I will open up pretty damn near anything. I make two exceptions: I generally don't try to fix anything made by Sony, because the stuff is (a) too damn complicated to touch and (b) generally engineered to defy attempts to repair it. I also don't do major engine work on Saabs, because as previously noted here, I lack a spotless aircraft maintenance hangar with eight factory-trained technicians in white lab coats. I long ago learned that this is what Saab assumes you have if you expect to work on a Saab 900.

Maybe they, Apple, and Sony all went to the same engineering school.

I had a good talk with Martha last night. I am making plans to go out there in a couple of weeks, though, as she is firm to insist, "I'm only guaranteeing dinner!" I have no problem with that... I mean, if she hates me in person, I can always rent a car and go down and visit otters!

I am still sad about the gray kitten. Her brother was out wandering around in the yard this morning, and I had words with him about staying away from the road.