The new Tivo is CableCarded and working great. I LOVE having access to my Netflix Instant Queue.

The old Tivo, on the other hand, is not playing nice with the cable box in the other room. It is the same cable box that had been connected to it before, but in moving it, I had to move the IR cable. And now I can't get the cable box to communicate with the Tivo no matter how I adjust the IR thingies. Too frustrated to keep futzing with it right now, but I do want to get it working eventually.

So far today I have learned that the Magsafe connector on Mac laptops, though normally quite cool (and definitely a good thing on the several occasions I've tripped on my power cord) is INCREDIBLY ANNOYING when your laptop battery is dead.

the Magsafe connector on Mac laptops [...] is INCREDIBLY ANNOYING when your laptop battery is dead.

How? Too delicate to stay in place?

Yeah. It's very easy to accidentally remove. I can't really sit on the couch and surf with it, because any significant shift has a good chance of unplugging it.

ETA: The newer Magsafe connectors are quite a bit better about this than the older ones, so I've managed to improve my situation somewhat by switching the adapter with the one that came with my newer laptop.

My original Powerbook is primarily busted because the power-cord was too hard to come out. The socket is all wrenched out of place. Battery is dead, so it's very precarious and I can't move it much.

I'm startled by how easily the Magsafe comes out, but since it's not damaging anything, it's for the best. But with a dead battery it'd drive me insane.

javachick, I'm afraid what you want is never going to happen. Amazon/B&N doesn't own the copyright to those books, remember, they just pass licenses along to you. Publishers are not likely to give you an option like that when they might potentially convince you to buy your favorite books a second time

Yeah, that's my assumption. So it's not really a value to me. If I were still in QA and traveling as much as Meara or ND, then it would be worthwhile.

Oddly, what I miss most right now about my Kindle is the fact that the Kindle sits very nicely on top of my microwave right above my sink, so I can easily crank up the font size and read while washing dishes. Since I have no dishwasher, I spend a good bit of time washing dishes, and that is kind of awesome.

Hee. I am too clumsy for that. I bet I would knock it into the dishwater in the first load.

I use Mobi even without a reader of any kind. I use it for my Project Gutenberg books. So it would be nice to have that compatibility going forward 'cause I already have all these files. But I am really ambivalent about it right now.

The only thing that seriously drew me toward the iPad was thinking about mounting it on the kitchen wall.

Fuck. Steaks.

My MacBook Pro is pinwheeling me at startup. It froze up while I was websurfing, giving me a beach ball, I had to force quit and force restart it, and all I've gotten since on startup is a grey apple and a pinwheel, and that's it. No chime, even.

Crap crap crap crap crap.