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I bought a new toilet seat

Finally got rid of that damn wooden one. It is plastic and white — and just about the only thing I own that works right now. Let me explain.

It is very hard to be a writer — let alone a writer with a website — if your computer doesn’t work. Well, as readers of this site may recall, my computer doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since a fateful night two months ago in Gansu, the halfway stop during The Trip. My girlfriend was visiting me. So was my iBook.

Details of the night in question are purposefully foggy. Let’s just say after all was said and done, the only thing my iBook did was flash a question mark — over and over and over again. The kiss of death (especially for an idiot who had a good bit of a life’s work on that hard drive … and never backed much of it up).

You may have heard rumors that the question mark was flashing because of my fist. That may or may not be true. But at least one expert, who recently had the exact same thing happen to him (minus the fist), believes the damage was done before I may or may not have laid into my laptop. I, for one, believe him. (You tech geeks out there can keep track of my iBook’s specific problems here.)

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12.01.2004, 3:28 AM · Diary · Comments (12)