My griping about my sucky laptop is over. Days gone by. For more than two years, one of the bezel hinges was broken, allowing too much play with the lid. When I got up to Chicago for SOBCon last month and opened it up when I got to the conference center, the second hinge broke and destroyed any chance of it saying open on its own. When I took the laptop to our new townhome the morning after closing, I powered it up to see if I could get any wireless signals before the Verizon guy came over. The screen was dead. Dead. Dead. Power, but no visual=useless piece of junk.

We suddenly realized that in two weeks I will be spending 18 hours per week on campus with no way to do any papers or earning freelance money for that time without another laptop. My wife, being the wonderful person she is said I could get a $100 laptop if I needed one that badly. Yes, I laughed at the number (silently) and thanked her for considering getting something done about the situation. I knew there weren’t any for $100 that could run Firefox with a few tabs open, but I was willing to wait to see what was going to come about.

After work, I came home to an e-mail from her that had 4 Craigslist ads for used laptops. One of them is the one I’m using now. It’s a 2002 iBook 700 with a 12.1″ screen, Airport wi-fi card, and an extra battery for emergency power. It’s not the hottest system out there, but it is worlds better than the PC I had and will more than do me until it dies or we start getting some major stuff flowing in from my freelancing, which is far from free, I assure you.

So, right now, I’m sitting in the waiting room (again) at Tampa General Hospital waiting for my quarterly clinic visit running off their wi-fi connection to get some real work done after this post.