Whow, by the looks of it i've been a bad bad blogger. And there is more then just a stale post staring me in the face, pointing out that fact. To be frank, the dark rings under my eyes and the fact that I sleep like a vampire on tranquilizers makes me realize that it might be time to slow down. Lets not jinx the week by calling it “slow” but i'll at least try to be home a little. And speaking of being out of the house.. my MacBook is not by my trusty site (bless you for saving me Ubuntu laptop) The MacBook is at the store !
If i like one thing then its a “clean” computer. I hate people who have dirty keyboards, greasy screens and smudgy laptops. Not even mentioning the dreaded “Sticky mouse syndrome” that you sometimes encounter. My computers are clean, shiny and although used extensively, look like they slid out of the box. Especially with a WHITE MacBook clean and shiny is very important. Imagine my aggravation when I noticed my MacBook started to suffer the “brown stain” disorder where the plastic on the palm rests and the click button stars to react to the grease on your hands by staining brown. So ones pretty white laptop looks like it has not been washed in ages and it looks like somebody has just worked on it who cleans septic pits for a living.
Now i'm not an mac-esthetic-snob who starts to cry and raise havoc over the fact that there is one little scratch on my ipod. But I had read about this “brown stain syndrome” on line and decided to pop by the local mac store to ask for help. When I explained my problem I expected them to either tell me I had 'tough luck', suggest some kind of detergent or kick me out. But to my surprise they where very helpful. It seems that the “brown palm rest” problem is covered by apple warranty and I just had to take my MacBook into the store and they would give me a new casing.
So my lovely wife (bless her !) took the time in a busy morning to take my MacBook to the store today in order to ship it. For me .. a little bit of a difficult decision. What surprised me is how attached I had grown to my MacBook and how hard it is to part from it for even a little week. Not that my data and anything are on there .. but its like handing over something very personal to stranger. weird , never had that feeling with another laptop before. ( I better shut up before they call me a fanboy). So if your MacBook is showing these stains, be sure to pop by your local Applestore and get it looked at : you can find more information here : AppleDefects and if they give you a hard time at the store you might want to print Apples official report on the issue.
What this leaves me with is the “challenge” to survive on my other laptop running Ubuntu 6.10. This will provide a small challenge, but then again, it might not. Cause I've done these 'Linux – exclusive' outings before, where I forced myself to survive on Linux for a whole week. But that was a few years ago when things where different. Today with Ubuntu and Automatix its a whole lot easier. But I do have some hurdles to jump : Like setting up a vpn connection to my home router for one. But we shall see where we end up 🙂 For now its off to bed and a little downtime.