Isn't it funny how computers will decide to curl up their toes and die at the most inopportune moments? And by funny, I don't mean Abbott-and-Costello funny, I mean tear-my-hair-out-and-gouge-out-my-eyes funny. That kind of funny.

For some reason, Magellan (my G5) has decided to pop up a "Connect to the file server" dialog whenever I attempt to open a new window. I suspect I know why it's doing it – assuming that most of the time I would be working with my laptop close at hand, I set a few of my most-used folders from Copernicus/Constantine (my laptop has been having an identity crisis latelY) into the 'bookmarked' area at the left side of the file browser window. Alas! Now, for some uncomprehensible reason, even when the laptop is sitting beside it and happily waiting with open arms for a connection, the machine chokes and dies with the eternal spinning beachball of death. This makes no sense to me, and this is so not the time for this.

Further, as per Murphy's law, the forums at apple.com are offline, which is horrible because that's where most of the Really Good Support is to be found. Person X will post something saying, "Allo, I have Problem Y," and Support Person Z will pop up and say, "Ah, there's no trouble, try Solution Z+1", and a good chunk of the time, everything's nice and sorted out. Now that they're gone, it's become pretty clear how anemic the Support page at Apple has truly become. Gone are the halycon days of til.info.apple.com, the Tech Info Library which used to be such a wonderful resource. Now I'm left sitting here, fuming and scowling and waiting for the reboot that never comes while the damn beachball of death spins on, and wondering whether the Apple people are scrambling to get the Discussions back online because it looks really pretty awful for anyone considering buying a Mac for Christmas to be unable to get any real substantive support, or if perhaps this whole thing isn't some Orwellian, Machiavellian scheme to make it seem like Macs have no problems at all.

My family, for example, was seriously considering investing in a new iMac to get some family members sans email online. At the moment, I think I'd recommend buying a nice toaster oven instead.

Fie, robots! Fie!