Oh hell, damn, and curses. So I'm just sitting at my beloved red laptop, whose name is Lola (because she is red and because then I can shout at her when she's not working, "RUN, Lola, RUN!" Hehehehee.... and now I have afflicted the world with my favorite geeky joke.) and just minding my own business, when she freezes, chokes, wheezes a few times and DIES. Like a BUG. Like a FISH on the FLOOR. Like a MONKEY in a LAKE. Like a TOASTER in the RAIN. DEATH. Are we understanding one another here? DEATH. Blue Screen O' Death.

Turns out the motherboard was fried. Fortunately I'm still under warranty with Dell, so after a week of trials and travails on the phone with some technician from India--I kid you not, Dell tech support is in India, *bangs head on wall-- whose name was some eleven-letter hairball-inducer which for the life of me I couldn't remember, something like Raghavadababad, so I spent the rest of the night referring to him as Rajamala and Ramayana and Rasputin and Rachmaninoff. Which I don't think he appreciated.

After a little (read: an hour and a half) verbal jousting with the aforementioned Red Rackham, I got them to send out a fellow to fix the damn glorified electronic abacus. So now I am back on line, rock on.

Not that I didn't use the time I didn't have this machine to distract me to get a lot of good things done, so I guess it all works out. We shall see if I ever get anything productive done ever again....