Tenacious R

The bee and my bonnet - a tale of woe, long hours, glimmers of hope, lots of very small screwdrivers, lots of very small screws, 2 powerbooks, an ibook and some electrical tape.

I wasn't going to fix the laptops for awhile. There was no great rush and I've got a lot on at the moment. But I needed to back some stuff up, so I thought I'd get them ready for that. It's just 2 I was going to fix, when I got round to it. So, just back them up, burn some disks and that would be that. Chuck them in a corner until I had some time free to sort them out properly. Easy peas-y. That was at about 4 yesterday afternoon.

At 330 this morning I had successfully fixed the powerbook. In fact, it was running better than it had in years. The ibook, sadly, wouldn't even turn on after I'd reassembled it. I paused to regroup and sleep.

I'm not normally obsessive. In fact, that sort of behaviour in others freaks me out. It freaks me out more when it happens to me. But sometimes it happens. Sometimes I cannot rest properly until I've fixed/solved/finished/sorted whatever it may be. Occasionally it's something important, more often it's irrelevant and moronic. It's a single-minded tenacity that, were I able to sustain it, and apply it throughout all my endeavours, would no doubt lead to a fabulously successful life with absolutely zero enjoyment.

I slept terribly. I ran in hopes of burning off some of the doggedness. I started back on the ibook at 930 and hours disappeared as I disassembled and reassembled, losing screws, finding screws, and at one point stripping down a very old powerbook in search of spare parts. I got it turning on again but the monitor wouldn't work. Time to disassemble again.

Breaks would be spent fiddling with the resurrected powerbook, just giving it some use and making sure it wasn't going to give anyone any nasty surprises. I even cleaned it.

By 8 this evening I put the ibook back together for the last time. Still no screen, but keyboard response - it works but I can't see anything. The powerbook's been ticking along fine and I'm using it to IM a friend in New York. I pick it up and put it in my lap and adjust the screen and it just snaps in my hand.

At that point I decided it was time for pizza and beer. My tenacity and tear ducts snapped with the screen.


On a totally different and bizarre note, yesterday marked the 86th anniversary of the US Postal Service banning the mailing of humans, after a couple posted their child to his grandparents for 53 cents. I just thought that was a cool little fact.

Update at 1105pm. I managed to get both the ibook and the powerbook backed up. Over 24 hours later.