Small Victories

So I picked up my iBook at the Apple Store yesterday. It seems to be working fine. Some of you may remember my previous troubles: When the motherboard failed in September, they replaced the part and, before sending me back my machine, wiped the hard drive, costing me two years' worth of work product and email. Then in February, the hard disk itself failed, and it took two tries before the repair dept got it right (I was able to pull all my data off, so no loss). This time, before the iBook was shipped out for repair, the Apple Genius and I spent about an hour pulling all my data off the hard drive--knowing that there was a good chance that the depot would wipe it--and it came back, of course, in tact. I don't know which corollary to Murphy's law suggests that backing up a computer prevents data loss on the original machine, but it certainly proved true in this case.

My education post below, wherein I coin "The Other 82%," was picked up by Fighting Bob as an article here.

Results are not up yet, as of this writing, in the MKE blog of the week contest. However, next week's contestants are already listed. There are a couple of good sites, including The News is Broken and Leaning Blue, which gets my tentative endorsement, because Belle, the proprietor, had the good sense to blogroll me. It also seems that there is a repeat winner among the contestants . . .

The dog bite is doing well. My arm is still swollen, but I'm getting better.

Most of you know that I'm teaching summer school. Today I lectured them: Okay, I said, I've noticed a startling trend--there is too much copying going on. It seems like you all are relying on a handful of people to do the work and then you're passing it around. But think about something, I said. Think about where you are, and who you're copying from. You're all in summer school, people. The odds are good that the person you're copying from didn't read the directions, either!

Return to regular posts tomorrow, with a Friday Random Ten and some other stuff.