For months – actually, since almost when I first got it – I've had issues with Remiel, my MacBook Pro. It's emitted a high-pitched whine whenever the brightness has been turned up past the halfway point, but that I could at least deal with. Earlier this summer, though, its mouse key started to stick, which quickly sent the machine sliding down a slippery slope from kludgey to unusable.

So, today, I finally took it into the shop. As it turns out, the extended AppleCare I bought for it covers all the repairs (YAY!) but it'll take about five days for it to get turned around and get Remiel back into my eagerly-waiting hands (BOO!). As Laura so helpfully pointed out, I still have Magellan (my three-headed dual G5 tower) at home and Yujinaka (my Cintiq-headed Intel Mac Pro) at work, so this shouldn't be that big a deal. Still, it feels weird to not be able to tinker with something on the laptop while watching TV. Shoot, I blew most of Saturday catching up on work and personal projects while watching the entire second season of Heroes on Blu-Ray. Tomorrow I'll be in my home office for most of the day, I suspect, continuing to chew away at the backlog of emails, putting the "labor" in Labor Day. I have got to get an air conditioner back into that room.

Friday. I'll have my baby back by Friday. I can make it that long, sure I can...

In other news, many of the reports flitting about the web following the film's release were absolutely right: 21 wasn't bad, but it didn't include nearly enough Asians in the MIT scenes.