Well, same ol’ same ol’ Mac, for now. The genius did this and that with it, recommended this and that, said we didn’t have to get medieval on anything just yet, and sent me home with a prescription to do an archive-and-install system software thing, maybe reset some deeply buried preferences in there that are making the thermostats go blooey. And maybe shoot some compressed air through the heat vents, too.

If all this fails, it’s back for the $75 diagnostic. My guess is, I’ll be buying a new MacBook sometime in the new year.

So many computer problems have a human equivalent: abdominal pain. Abdominal pain is the Pacific Ocean of ailments. Could be anything from nervousness to bad clams to a rotten appendix to cancer. For now, we’re treating with Alka-Seltzer. No need to pull the plug on the patient just yet.

I was the second person through the door at the store at 10 a.m., and the place was full within minutes. They haven’t set up the iPod-only register yet; that’ll be later in the Christmas season, I expect. But if you’re a longtime Mac user, if you’ve come through the time when PC dipshits would say, “Oh, look, a toy computer,” then it’s pretty gratifying. Apple is still a fraction of the market and always will be, but I’d say they’ve gotten their act together, and I wouldn’t use anything else.

LATER: Did the software thing, blew out the vents. Things seem to be running cooler, but I’m now officially in backup-every-48-hours mode, preparing for the worst. In my troubleshooting I did discover something, however: I’m down to my last 2 gigs of hard-drive space. How the hell did that happen? Pictures and music, that’s how.

Elsewhere yesterday, for the first time in a long time, my attention was taken by events back no-longer-home in Indiana — the county GOP chairman seems to be having some domestic problems. I could write 10,000 words about this guy, but I won’t, in the name of bygones, etc. But here’s what interests me about all this: How the story is an example of how media consumption is different now. Note, for instance: Three bylines on the newspaper story, including that of the very conservative columnist, who I assume was brought in to get the quote from the chairman.

(And what a quote, too: “I want the public to know how challenging it can be for families: finances, children’s problems, drugs,�? he said. “Family values are important … but life isn’t perfect. I have yet to find an Ozzie and Harriet. This is part of life.�?)

When three reporters work on a simple police-incident story, dear readers, it’s a tip-off that it’s time to go spelunking. Ten years ago, I’d call around to people who keep up with stuff, ask them. Today, I check the blogs and find, ho ho, it’s the county Democratic chairman who’s been bird-dogging the story, and has been for some time. There’s also a good question that this involves more than a marital dispute, which may be touched upon in a 911 call, and the state police are withholding the 911 call and transcript.

I told Alan last night that five years ago, there’s a very good chance this story wouldn’t have seen the light of day at all. We had an editor who was hesitant to look at people’s private lives, even public figures’. No charges filed? A broken-off key in a car ignition? Oh, this is hardly domestic violence. We very well might have looked the other way.

Now, I’d be willing to bet the GOP organization is telling a few people to get their good suit from the cleaners and be ready to put on the red tie on a moment’s notice. Thanks to the internet. The brave new world.

In the last two days, my laptop’s fan has taken to running continuously, and for good reason — it’s hot enough to give my actual lap second-degree burns. (Of course, as it’s now 3.5 years old, it’s entirely possible that the machine is menopausal, and these are hot flashes.) As my editing job requires me to stay online for four hours a night, this gets on my last damn nerve, as you can imagine. So it’s off to the Apple store we go this morning. I’m hopeful for a repair, but as these things usually happen, there’s at least a 50-50 chance I’ll be coming home with a new computer, dammitall.

(And, of course, now I’ve had the thing running for 10 minutes and the fan hasn’t come on yet. Which is probably what will happen in the store. …Ah, there it goes. Still broken.)

So you carry on here, and I’ll be back eventually, probably poorer. Now to go online and make a reservation at the Genius Bar. (Sheesh. You know, I love Apple, and I love my Mac, but sometimes they make it a little hard.) Wish me luck.

I seem to be taking a break. Please enjoy your holiday weekend, and I’ll be back in a day or two.

I loves my readers. Jason had a little time on his hands today. He doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to find Waldo in that NYC picture. He said he found him right away:

And over at Grosse Pointe Today, a profile by its sole proprietor, of another local entrepreneur and his quest to give the world a real electric car. He let me drive it.

Craigslist is the place to go for several things: Free classifieds that skew to younger eyeballs, casual sex hook-ups and pornography of a different sort:

I need someone who can correct,explain grammatical errors,show grammer rules and using more complicated words to rewrite my essays through e-mail.
My short essay will be included not over 500 words.
I need someone help me over 3 or 4 months, and you can return my assignment the next day or the day after next day.
I will pay 2 dollars for per assignment.

Two dollars. Not even five. Not even a medium latte.

Try Bangalore, bub. We pay union wages here.

Busy day, plus I’m coming down with something. I’m off to buy zinc and pick up dry cleaning, but I leave you with bloggage:

NN.C is in its sixth year of Proudly Bringing You the Irrelevant and Uninteresting, but my thirst for online shenanigans remains unslaked. And so this week comes the soft launch of Grosse Pointe Today, a learn-as-I-go experiment in web-based hyperlocal community journalism. I’m not looking for congratulations as much as I am feedback, so if you go over there, pretend you live here and tell me what would make you visit such a site on a daily basis. My ambitions are not so much to be the next William Randolph Hearst as Mitch Harper, only with less politics.

Columnist goes toe-to-toe with publisher, and publisher blinks. To paraphrase Homer Simpson (“Kill my boss? Dare I live the American dream?), Carl Hiaasen is truly living it. The American Dream, that is.

Scalzi has a list of Mark Foley’s next ten heart-rending personal disclosures.

Off to head this rhinovirus off at the pass.

Two issues at hand today:

1) If you try to post a comment and it doesn’t appear, let me know. Several things could have happened — spam-filtering being the most obvious. Occasionally I delete comments because they’re really stupid, but that happens only rarely.

2) If you use HTML in your comments — which I allow — please check your tags before you publish. For want of a tag, a thread is lost, or at least screwed up.

That said, Laura, I think I deleted your comment. I thought de-spamming it would make it post, but I guess not. Then I deleted the whole spam file and pfft. Sorry.

…and it feels so good.

Just a note: This weekend is the semi-regular reunion of the Knight-Wallace Fellows, over Ann Arbor way. Of course I’m going, which means I’ll be scarce around these parts until the last thunderous round of applause has faded from the air. That is, sometime on Sunday. Until then it’ll be lectures and seminars and maybe, MAYbe, a little drinking.

And it all starts with lunch in about two hours, when fF Vince Patton arrives in Grosse Pointe and demands to be shown around. So I have to clean the house. Later, dudes.

It reads: Closed for Labor Day weekend. The party restarts Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, you “Deadwood” fans might want to read Lance on the subject: Deadwood and the Libel of George Hearst.

Doing a massive office cleaning today, and I’d like some advice: What paper should you save? Really. Do you ever really need some of this stuff again? I’m saving anything that might come up in a tax audit, brokerage statements, sentimental “I Love My Mom” drawings from Kate, but the rest is going into the shredder.

A ruling, please, on some of these items:

** My property tax assessment (not the bill).
** Disclosure documents for our mortgage — the “good faith estimate” stuff, not the closing statements.
** A book report on “We’ll Race You, Henry: A story about Henry Ford.” I’m telling myself I’m saving it for the check-plus-plus/”outstanding!” grade, but I think I’m really saving it because I can’t believe my child is learning about Henry Ford and not Eddie Rickenbacker.
** An old copy of O magazine. I don’t think I’m ever going to write for them.

UPDATE: OK, this is a keeper:

Chez Panisse, downstairs dinner menus for the week of May 17-22, 1993

…Tuesday, May 18, $45
Salmon steamed in fig leaves
New garlic soup a la James Beard
Duck grilled over vine cuttings with garden salad
Neapolitan cherry savarin

We went on the BART from our hotel in San Francisco. We arrived early, and so explored the record stores on Telegraph Avenue. It was there I learned that the Metal category had about two dozen sub-categories, each one occupied by one and no more than two bands. Because god forbid Speed should get mixed in with Death.

Our honeymoon — ah memories.

Hey, thanks! We’re all pretty again!