I was originally going to post something frivolous about how awesome three-day weekends are, but after I lost the damn thing twice due to computer problems, I decided not to re-write it a third time. Instead I think I'll muse about how I planning to save up some money and buy a new computer to replace the one I have now, even though the current one is less than a year old.

I really am extremely frustrated with this machine. I've had more hardware problems with it in the seven or so months since I bought it than I've had with all other computers I've ever owned combined. Sometimes the screen doesn't work, sometimes the keyboard doesn't work, sometimes the whole computer shuts down at random, for no reason, taking and files I'd been working on with it. The hard drive has already failed once, and my internet browsers are constantly crashing. Usually I'm very well disposed towards computers, but this one has done nothing but antagonize me since I first turned it on.

So I'm thinking I'll do what I can to get it fixed up -- it's still under warranty, so that'll only cost me bus fare to get down to the Apple store -- and then sell it. Sometime shortly before that I'll put in an order for a new computer. Not another MacBook, because if it turn out to be as much of a lemon as this one I think my head will explode with annoyance, but I probably would get another mac anyway because that's what I know and that's what I have software for and I've never had any significant trouble with a macintosh computer before this one.

The question then becomes "iMac or MacBook Pro"? iMacs get you more computing power for your money, but MacBook Pros are so wonderfully mobile -- something that would be especially important if my apartment-mates and I can't get our wireless internet working right and I have to keep moving the computer around to plug it directly into the modem any time I want to go online. Portability could also be an issue because I will probably be leaving Toronto at the end of the summer, and I'll be wanting to move my computer with me. Although I've collected so much stuff since I started university that I have to rent a large car to move all my things anyway, so the difference between moving a laptop vs. moving a desktop is probably not that major.

If nothing else, a new computer is something fun to fantasize about. Especially during those long nights spent anxiously watching the spinny colour wheel of doom, praying I haven't lost all my work again.

So on Monday I lost my laptop. Or rather it was stolen. Basically, while Beth and I were at Union Station in Toronto, waiting for my train to come in, someone walked off with my backpack (and the laptop inside). We were very much distracted by the episode of SGA we were watching on her computer at the time, and never noticed anything was amiss until we got up to go and discovered said backpack had vanished.

Even then it took a while for the fact of it to sink in. We must have searched the station three times over at least, in hopes that I'd dropped it somewhere earlier on and had forgotten about it. We checked at the Lost and Found, VIA Baggage and with Station Security. Days after the fact, I still kept expecting it'd turn out that I'd just left it on the GO bus on the way in or on the platform or something, but it's been nearly a week now and still nothing's turned up, so I think I can be fairly certain that I've actually been the victim of an honest to god theft, and not just my own absent mindedness and poor memory.

Anyway, most of this week has been devoted to dealing with the aftermath of that. Honestly, the sheer number of phone calls, e-mails, and web forms I've had to make, send, and fill out since I got back has been staggering. And exhausting.

Also, the notebook in which I was doing my pseudo-NaNoWriMo game script was in the backpack. So I guess that's been called off too. As was one of Beth's cool T-shirts from Japan. If anyone knows a good place to order cool T-shirts from Japan, let me know. I'd like to find her a replacement.

Oh, and for the world at large, and chowriit in particular: I've switched over almost entirely to using the k.r.langer gmail address for all my correspondence. You can send stuff to my other addresses and I'll probably find it eventually (provided I still have access to it -- hotmail and warwick addresses are all dead), but gmail is preferred.