I Got's DIY in my DNA

I finally tired of my techno-impotence the other day. I yanked out my 6-month dead Mac laptop, the one on which I edited "Dead Men" (thus dearly hated to part with), and pulled off a massive DIY (do it yourself) coup involving about a hundred micro-screws and snap-plug connectors so small an infants' finger would be hard-pressed to manipulate them. Of all the laptops ever made by Mac, this one, I was told, was the one not even Mac geeks liked to touch, its innards all foil-wrapped and densely packed, a virtual impossibility for the novice.

I'd already paid one such geek $100 to go in and pry into my private files and suck what he could out of a synapticly-mangled hard drive and onto a backup DVD before the thing totally died. Had I waited any longer, I was sure the 20 gig HD, no bigger than 1/4 of a deck of playing cards, would have imploded in upon itself like a white dwarf star, then back out again, blowing up me, my boat, San Francisco Bay and leaving a hole in the western hemisphere large enough to park the moon, as white dwarfs are known to do.

Anyway, said geek wasn't the first to tell me how hard it was to do surgery on a G3 iBook, but he was the first to give me a glimmer of hope that I, Rick McKinney, recipient of the Half Off For Jesus Lifetime Unemployability Grant Award, could possibly perform said surgery MYSELF.

He didn't say it in those terms. What he did say was, "Yeah, the screens on those will sometimes short out, and to go in and find the short you gotta take apart everything to get to this tiny bundle of wires and unwrap the foil and tape, and ugh!" To which I said, "Oh, yeah, I had that problem once. I fixed that." At this point he looked at me like I had three heads and exclaimed, "You did what?"

So I took a crack at it. I dissected more of the computer than necessary (what did I know?) when I thought, "Hmm, I wonder?" and went online and sure enough there was this site iFixit.com that laid it all out for you. With ease, I found hard drive removal directions for my exact model, paged through 1, 2, 3.. over twenty pages of instructions and said, "Hot damn! I did all right!" I was so impressed and grateful for their step-by-step instructions that I ordered the part from them, right then and there, badda-bing badda-bang! And for half the cost of the recovery DVD I'd paid the geek to make me.

That was three days ago. I got the new hard drive in the mail today. I'd like to say I got it reinstalled successfully, but it's still sitting here wrapped in bubble wrap on the galley table of my floating home awaiting my attention. And as it's currently 4:45 a.m. and this vampire's insomnia is giving way to the greater threat of dawn, I'm going to leave you with this thought: it WILL be successfully reinstalled.

And if Sir Bats-in-the-Belfry ducky slippers and a beach bucket on his head (picture above) can do that, JUST IMAGINE what great things you NORMAL PEOPLE are capable of!

- RSM

Paris Hilton Visits Jutland(& other 5-star beaver stories)

Had my head buried in Paris Hilton's box..
uhh, sandbox.. I mean the sand for some time. Jeezus, whaz it been? Six months? A year? How long's it take for an old life to die, and yer best friend with it?

Moved to Oakland, CA and bought a sailboat. Lived on it awhile, traded my old BMW for some of the equity, then bought another one. Now I have two. Figger I'll collect a dozen or so, tie em all off on a mooring in the Oakland estuary right 'round where Jack London sat drinkin' and crafting the tales that made him the first millionaire writer in the new America, then sell em all in trade for "Jeliza-Rose," she who will take me across the Pacific, the boat as yet to be named for novelist Mitch Cullen's character expertly portrayed by Jodelle Ferland (pictured above) in Terry Gilliam's latest film. She'll be something in the forty foot range, something capable of taking me and a crew of two across blue water to Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Jutland, who knows.

For now, as a test of whether or not anyone monitors this site
anymore, two things:

One, give me yer thoughts on the new Terry Gilliam film "Tideland" via my spam-invincible email address jigglebox1@yahoo.com or.. ya know, the
other one, the one I only give out to family and friends and readers
who've proven their fealty to Lord Duke, Inc.

And two, here's a bizzaro offer I stumbled upon that's sure to
stimulate some response from ya'll by a truly bold and curvaceous
anti-space alien theorist way out there in the Earthmos.

Read up. And write on.

http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1997.11/msg00074.html

Gott Verdammt!
- RSM

photo: I will always love you, Stormy Turner
For more shots of Stormy, go here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jigglebox

By the way, Paris, I saw your videos and they are, well, lame. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can TOTALLY relate to your exhibitionist tendencies and well, if I had tits and a twat, I'd wanna be you. But I ain't you. I don't have tits or a twat, but I'm ONE HELLUVA EXHIBITIONIST! Damn, girl, at least get some better videographer boyfriends. I got this friend Harrod Blank, (he calls me Cindy, like Cindy Crawford, cuz he KNOWS I Looooove The Camera) who is a real sweetheart & stand-up guy and who would DO YOU RIGHT, HONEY CHILD! Well, until we talk again, you know, the offer's open. - RSM