So Negative Nelly (your gracious and sexah author and host) was dead wrong. Dentist was straightforward and only a little painful (well, actually I expected that would be the case for the dentist). The Apple store was quick - they didn't even need to see the Mac and ordered the drive with no hassle - I was in there only about 45 minutes and the bulk of that was waiting in line at the Genius Bar. IKEA on Monday morning was unreal - I breezed in and out in under an hour. I was home before noon, and managed to even catch a MTGO tournament and built the new shelves in between rounds. So today I spent a fair amount of time adjusting to life with a sick Mac - I switched BACK to the Mac, got my docs on it, etc and just started backing up early and often. And here's the killer. The Palo Alto store just called and they have my replacement hard drive. Yes, that's right the one they ordered yesterday and had no idea when it would arrive. So all my workflow adjustments are for naught :-) Tonight I'm going to go buy an external HD and just clone the dying drive onto that - I feel safer with that than my "Well I have all the data on the linux box" strategy. Given that three Macs will get upgraded to Tiger in the next month - having a reliable whole disk backup strategy is sound. Well worth some scratch to make it easy and bulletproof. The moral of this story is if you live in the Bay Area take your sick Apple hardware to Palo Alto, not Valley Fair. If I had done that three weeks ago it would probably be fixed by now. And I wouldn't have switched between OS X and Windows twice in the last four weeks :-)

Ok, so I've been quiet recently. ("How is that different?" the peanut gallery choruses. Shut it, says I as I push the Dr. Evil switch and dump you all into the furnace.) It's been a number of things really. 1) I couldn't talk about the Magic gig. Although there was plenty else to talk about it was difficult enough supervising the giddy little loop in my head without blogging other stuff. Oddly having the one secret bottled up my desire to write anything. 2) The whole "dead Mac" issue. Which isn't resolved, not really. I'm writing this on my Windows box and that just makes me cranky. That's stupid - MT looks the same in just about any browser but there you are. Having segued - let's talk about the Mac. As I said late on the 20th I noticed the hard drive was failing. On Monday the 21st I took into the Valley Fair Apple store. The Genius (their term - not mine, although I'll admit the sarcasm is mine) there insisted on running all the various tests, repairing permissions and the like (even though I'd done all of that already). So it took about half an hour to get his attention, and then he spent about a hour and a half watching my computer confirm it was still broken. So he took the Mac to send it away. There was some minor hubbub about their computer didn't want to accept the repair, so I end up with a manual form with no tracking number on it. He says 7-10 business days. (sigh) Long enough to be annoying, but not quite long enough to justify buying a Mac mini. So it goes. I give it 9 business days and then call Apple - on Friday April 1st. Apparently the drive is back-ordered and the machine isn't expected back until 4/8. The lady starts a "parts search" and tells me that someone from Apple Care will call me on Tuesday. It's a pain to actually track down my record - I don't have the repair number and the "Genius" (definitely my sarcasm now) didn't put all of the serial number on my form. Eventually we hunt it down in the computer though. Tuesday 4/5 rolls around, and about 3:45 I call Apple Care. Well they aren't supposed to promise any call - and the HD is still backordered. Now they think 4/25 - but nobody really knows that's a totally made up date. Note that we're past the 7-10 days I was given originally and just sailing into the future. I fuss and complain - basically said they've taking a functional computer and have no real idea when it is going to be fixed. Ultimately (after well over an hour on the phone) I get them to send it back unrepaired, and broker some deal where the Palo Alto store (which could apparently fix it on site) will order a replacement drive and call me when it arrives. For some inexplicable reason to me I have to take it to the Palo Alto store where they can poke at it (and presumably run "Repair Permissions" - hot tip to the "Geniuses" - "Repair Permissions" can't fix an impending hardware failure) before this order can be made. In the meantime Apple is sending me an external drive - I wasn't sure if that's a "we're sorry we screwed up so badly" permanent present or a loaner unit until they straighten out my HD. I guess I'll find out when it arrives, hopefully later this week. So Friday VF called and I went and got my sadly non-fixed Mac back. It still runs and everything - but it's a little uncomfortable to do much on a HD that it still claims is failing. So I'm going to have to sojourn up to Palo Alto tomorrow and probably spend a couple of hours there. I'd try to meet Crystal folks for lunch, but tomorrow ended up being a big knot of suck and I won't have time. (I'm going to the dentist, then to . . . Ikea (shudder), and then the Apple store. I'm sure by the end of that I'll be in a foul mood anyway.) And those of you waiting for a report on Virtual PC - well I'm not installing anything new until I get the "permanent HD" installed. Anyway, I decided I had to get back in the posting habit, so there's a dump of my sad little Mac and its status. Coming soon - I should talk about Republic Commando, and maybe more PSP games (I picked up Metal Gear and Gameflew Ape Escape). OH! And also maybe some talk about the MOMA. I really liked the Robert Bechtle exhibit. If you live in the area you should go see it. If you're cheap harass me or Karin - we can take guests :-)

I've been emailing like a fiend - but if you find this post first . . . I have news. That's right - I'm going to be writing a Magic the Gathering novel for Wizards of the Coast. It will be out in February 2007, and there's not really a whole lot more I'm allowed to say about it :-) I am super, super stoked! Especially since I broke my big announcement before Chuji's and with 100% less annoying cockteasing!