This morning started out fine. I broke the news that my external HDD crashed and she took it well one I assured her that all 3,700 pictures (half of which are of Isabella) were doing just fine on my laptop. In order to mitigate against further disaster, I decided to pack up my laptop and take it to work, so that I could hook it up to our network and copy all the priceless stuff over to my desktop computer or any other computer. Meanwhile, I bought the Linksys NSLU2, as well as another hard drive and enclosure for backing up the backup and making the whole thing available over the network. I also got Michelle a nother 256 MB of RAM for her Dell laptop, which was tapped out on the built-in RAM.

I got the computer to work, plugged it in, turned it on, and walked away when I heard the familiar Mac “bing!”. I went to the break room, got my breakfast, and returned to my desk to find that the iBook appeared to be off.

So I pressed the power button, and heard the hard drive heads go “clunk” as they parked themselves. This is normal, but worrying that it was on with no video.

I turned it back on. “Bing.”

I heard the drive scribbling along, frantically booting Mac OS X. Then I realized that the video wasn’t coming on. Pressing the brightness controls weren’t working. Pressing the volume controls did work (they make feedback sounds), as did electronically ejecting the CD-RW drive.

Oh crap.

I found the VGA dongle that hooks it up to an external monitor. OH JOY. Video backlight comes on. Apple logo on the backlit screen. Gray screen on the external monitor. Then, fade to black, no logo. Nothing.

Reboot. Nothing. Reboot. Still nothing.

So, I now have a functional iBook that boots with no video. It appears to be exibiting one of the problems noted here, but it appears that the logic board repair program lapsed last March.

It makes a boy want to cuss, I tell you.

UPDATE. So now I’m calling Apple’s support phone number. They have decent hold music.

• “Love Like We Do” by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
• “Make Me Shine” by Echo and the Bunnymen

And then, I spoke too soon as I’m shunted over to some crap-ass R&B. Still holding.

Ok. A Nice Guy tells me that I can get my logic board replaced at no cost. They’ll send me a postage paid box. It’s my responsibility to get the hard drive backed up, which, according to Nice Guy, I can do if I hook the computer up to another Mac via Firewire and turn it on while holding down the “T” key.

This is better than shelling out for a new computer. I just have to be without my iBook for a week.

Patience is in short supply around these parts, though. It’s a virtue I never really learned.