I am on my fifth phone call with them trying to get the cable tv back in operation. They even agree that my paperwork says that I requested the shutoff on the 27th. There is a race on which I specifically want to watch. I have kept cable a month longer than planned for for this.

I am going to discuss the fact that I shouldn't be paying for the two days that it was off and their fault. And I am going to be pissed if my dvr is empty once I can see it again. But I will deal with those in writing after my tv is back. So far I have spent a cumulative of two hours on the phone with them. I'm working on the assumption that I am not hanging up until it works. Or I know they are calling ME back ten minutes after it should be working.

I really need to investigate alternate ISPs.

eta: Two and a half hours but the guy willingly stayed on the phone until I could confirm that the tv was back on and he volunteered a $20 credit. Finally find a good tech on TW and I am still ditching my cable and phone on the 27th. Still, I got his name so good report will go in his file.

Hivemind poll:

My ancient Macbook (six years old? maybe seven?) is slowly dying; it may be rehabbable by a local Mac guy willing to go in and tinker with it on his own, but it's old enough that the actual Apple Store people won't touch it anymore. Local Guy is definitely going to get a shot at giving it better braaaains, but it would probably behoove me to get another laptop just in case. I could get a refurbished last year's Macbook Air for around $800 with my academic discount, but, while futzing around in Groupon, I saw a new special for HP Envys for $569.

I don't game or play movies or watch TV or do much of anything but write and edit, mess around with fairly basic graphic design, and hang out here. I'm fine with either OS but probably rather more at ease with Windows than whatever big cat Mac is up to now. Any opinions on whether it's worth it to go for the Macbook Air, or whether I'd be just as well served with the HP and letting Local Guy see whether he can Frankenmac the old laptop?

I adore my 11" Air, it's the second one I've had. However, you'll probably get more space and such on the HP Envy.

We've got a small windfall coming in so the Air is doable; I'm just not certain that it's worth the extra $200 and change for what will amount to a portable box to plonk words into. I do love them, though. So terribly pretty, and fast, and so light.

If you want to keep the new laptop for six or seven years I think you should get the Air.

I love my now 2-year-old Thinkpad Edge. The 14" model starts at $530, but it's a regular laptop at 1" think and 4.75lbs rather than Macbook Air size.

ION, I picked up a Lenovo S6000 tablet. So far I'm liking it. Much faster than my old Xoom 2 and I put in a 16GB microSD card I already owned to expand it to 32GB. The big drawback is that the resolution isn't any better than a Xoom 2 or iPad 2. But still seems like a good deal at $250.

Steve Ballmer to retire from Microsoft.

Microsoft's stock price is up 7.5% this morning.

Why would someone change their Apple ID email address to someone else's? It's not like you type in my full name by mistake (well, I found a chick with the same name as mine who messed up on her Facebook account, but Andy Mahon has no such excuse). Is there some sort of angle? Like, can he get into my Apple shit, or something--is email address the unique key for those?

Like, can he get into my Apple shit, or something--is email address the unique key for those?

No; he would need your password, too. That's happened to me before. Do you use a Gmail address for your Apple stuff? Gmail does this thing where adding a period into the part of the address before the @ doesn't actually change the recipient. For instance, I will get e-mail to smlang @gmail .com, but also sm.lang or s.mlang, etc.

Someone registered as s.mlang and I got an email from Apple welcoming "Steve" to his Apple account, so I immediately went in to my account and changed my password. Take THAT, Steve who doesn't understand e-mail!