well....here's a little story for you.

See Marit.
See Marit's laptop.*
See Marit's laptop run. Run, laptop, run.
What a good laptop.

(fast forward to summer, 2006)

See Valhall.**
See Marit's laptop in Valhall.
See Marit open her laptop in Valhall. Open, laptop, open.
What a cracked screen!

(fast forward to summer, 2007, after losing the laptop for 2 months for repair)

See Valhall.******
See Marit's laptop in Valhall.
See Marit's laptop play dead. Play dead, laptop, play dead!
What a clever******* laptop.

(fast forward to fall 2007)

See The Boy.
See The Boy with Marit's laptop.
See The Boy performing surgery on the laptop. Code, laptop, code!********
What an efficient autopsy.

*this is The Beast, in all its beefy schwarzenagger-ness.***
**See also the evil**** gremlins in Valhall.
***ugh, just remembered/realized that I'm now a constituent of the guvernator. siiigh.
****possibly not evil, just misunderstood. although they never came forward, which is more irritating, possibly, than the act itself.*****
*****I know. too much terry pratchett.
******possibly mimes brønn. I don't actually remember which it was.
*******clever in that it'll work again...after a full lobotomy. yeesh.
********not code as in make a program that might do something, but code as in bring the nurses running while the doctor's name blares over the PA system.

So there you have it. The Beast is dead. autopsied. cannibalized for parts. pictures later.

this is what happens when your motherboard stops....doing whatever a motherboard is supposed to do. Probably died because of the screen's dying, and it just took a while to die. Considering that I didn't use my laptop much from when I got it back to when it refused to function (moving and not wanting to lug it to boston and being on a boat kinda cuts in on your computer time), that's not that much of a stretch.

O you who sat on my laptop and shattered the screen, you owe me a guinness. no- lots of Guinnesses.

And now it's far past my bedtime and I didn't even get to address my irritation at the institution that is Apple and iTunes.