Look! The MacBook Air! It’s back! I took a picture of it here with the Acer so you would know it wasn’t just me pretending to live in happier times. It arrived this afternoon, along with everything else in my computer bag, minus the ARC of Redshirts I gifted to the fellow at Reagan National who tracked me down. It’s nice when things have a happy ending.
Thus concludes my computer drama. I will never lose my MacBook Air again. Ever. I SWEAR.
Yay! Kill the fatted calf and feast merrily!
And there is hope for humanity, their is.
you realize you just jinxed yourself there?
I’m glad it got back to you. I thought it was likely.
Yay!
I give him two weeks, if he’s cautious.
Most excellent.
(I now have a mental image of you, going through airports handcuffed to one of those aluminum briefcase-things… though how on earth you’d get through security with that nowadays I haven’t the faintest, foggiest idea…)
Yay! For great good fortune.
So, are you considering proximity detectors on your computer/stuff when you’re traveling next?
(Have they invented those yet?)
Because I need them too.
May this house be safe from gremlins.
Yay! Did you hug it and kiss it and pet it? I totally would have done that. I actually did do that when my computer finally came from the computer hospital.
This is a post that needs some sound along with the pic… maybe a heavenly choir in the background?;-)
Welcome home, Mac Air and computer-bag-stuff.
The poor Acer thing is feeling neglected.
I’d be lost without my Mac laptop. Nice to know yours made it home safely.
Dana (confirmed Mac cultist and proud of it.)
@Dana, I’d be lost without my Win7 Desktop*. :-D
*confirmed user of a PC with 5 different OSes on it curently.**
**and several victims that made it only as far as the install***
***and a few others that made it past boot up. ;-)
Scalzi,
Go get yourself a copy of Prey (http://preyproject.com/). If you lose it, you’ll be able to track it. Works great on macs!
I noticed over the weekend that Jay Lake has his liberally stickered inside the lid with “$200 reward – no questions asked” and some 800 number he presumably maintains (plus his email address). I meant to ask him whether that had ever worked for him, but I failed.
Congrats on getting your gear back! However, it looks to me like your right speaker and phone may be feeling inadequate and looking to kill your MacBook in the Office with the Microphone.
Now that you don’t need it anymore, are you going to have a giveaway contest for the Acer? ;-)
@Brad Hughes:
Are you suggesting inter-gadget rivalry? Ya know.. Skynet might have a thing or three to say about that… not that anyone (but me) would believe that gadgets might, ummmm, wanna remove each other from the Gadg-osphere. … just saying.. not like my DVD player tries to shank my B-R on the PC or anything.. (or that some ‘Libre’ labeled “software” tries to shank and burn said hardware… ).
Gosh darn it, sir! I am trying really, really, really hard to not buy a Macbook and this picture is not helping. Look how shiny it is! Look how bright! So shiny. So bright.
Sigh.
Hooray for the prodigal!
That is SO GREAT!!!!! Relief!!
So awesome. Nigh unbelievable, even!
I love how you have got it to glow in the photo! My technique, when travelling with bags, is to remind myself: ‘I got on with X [number] of bags; I will get off with X [number] of bags’. I find it helps.
I hope this restored your faith in the DC metro area! Sometimes people actually do their jobs and get it right. Unlike Congress, but they aren’t locals and that’s another story…
So glad you got it back!
Wohoo! Happy end!
What’s the guy’s name? I have to be at Reagan next week so I’ll track him down and
swipe his Redshirt ARCthank him for you.w00t!!
@ DigitalAtheist
*shudders* The closest I’ll get to Win 7 these days in WINE.
@Gulliver
“*shudders* The closest I’ll get to Win 7 these days in WINE”
*shudders* The closest I’ll get to anything that uses wine is in VirtualBox.
less derail-y, and a bit more on topic-y:
I mentioned adding some heavenly chorus music for this photo… ya might also want to add some sparkles to the halo.
Oh, and I do hope that one of the awesome Ladies of House Scalzi snapped a picture of you on your knees, hands clasped in submission, weeping and begging forgiveness from the Mac for leaving it behind.
Just ’cause your adoring public would think it would be yet another awesome picture. ;-)
Hey! wasn’t it grey before? Now it looks so shiny and white!
Are you going to put a luggage tag on your carry-on bag from now on? ;-)
The Reagan-izing of what had been Washington National Airport, a happily neutral name if ever there was one, was not welcomed by airport employees – possibly including the same ones who returned the computer. Here’s an excerpt from the letters published in the Washington Post under the title “Arrogant Congress National Airport” in late February 1998: “I work at Washington National Airport and have not found one employee who likes or appreciates the new name that was heavy-handedly imposed upon our workplace.”
Here in the DC area, ever since, people who call the airport Reagan are immediately identified as ideological partisans by people who will never call it anything but National, and (probably) vice versa. Out there in the heartland, now that 14 years have passed and most travel web sites use some version of DCA that includes ‘Reagan,’ perhaps it doesn’t have the same ideological resonance – sort of like Christmas symbols in public places not necessarily seen as promoting a particular religion under certain circumstances (according to recent U.S. Supreme Court doctrine).
But for chrysake, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I posted this tip in the ARC giveaway thread, but then I realized that nobody was going to actually read those comments and I thought it was a really good idea when I thought of it, so I’m repeating it here:
We have tons and tons of adhesive address labels laying around (every charity on the planet seems to send us more) so I grabbed some one day, stuck one on a piece of notepaper, wrote my cell phone number on the bottom and put the piece of paper in a snack sized ziploc bag. Then I stuck one of those baggies in every bag and suitcase I have. Voila! Instant identification inside all our bags.
@gottacook: You also never hear the people who refer to DCA as “Reagan” refer to BWI as “Thurgood Marshall.”
(Resonance of the SWM thread fades slowly…)
@DC Spartan: Well, the renaming of BWI as “BWI Thurgood Marshall” (by the Maryland legislature) was only done in response to what happened to DCA and very likely would never have happened otherwise, so the choice to use that name or not when speaking of BWI is bound to be similarly (and needlessly) politicized.
Anyone flown to Idlewild lately? At least THAT President was assassinated in office, and did something for flight besides make it more dangerous.
Maybe we should start a pool on when Mr. Scalzi will lose his computer again.
Prodigal? More like abandoned to fate.
Prodigal????!?!?!?
I think Athena will enjoy her new Acer Netbook. :)
Sean:
She already has a laptop that’s better than that one. But don’t worry. I’m sure I will find a use for it.