some very simple stuff about travelling apples. the apples were organic. i had to pull them out of a plastic encasing though, into which they might have been put shortly after their arrival from new zealand. that's a pretty long trip for someone who claims to be good for the environment. (something... not someone. i hope the apples did not have a soul.) maybe the apples i ate took a sailboat made out of bio degradable materials only to get to the piers in red hook? and they rolled themselves up the slope from there? now they are gone. the tasty parts separated from the rest. eaten. gone. the cores and skins are ready to be shipped back to a landfill in hmm... would that be new zealand again? there is a tingling in my mouth as if the apples had not been organic at all. or maybe it is not the chemical part that kicks me about them? my other apple has been in the shop for (let me check iCal) almost 20 daysnow. the display was a bit on the loose side and blotchy and the thing would not close properly anymore. then somewhere on the way to los angeles last month, the airport card disappeared from the consciousness of the operating system. i know, i should not be playing with an airport card, while 10000 feet in the air and definitely between airports, but what if it was just gone? i mean, not there. the invisible airport? (how useful would that be?) i made an appointment with the apple store in santa monica, as this was where i spent about a week working. my appointent was the last one before the shop closed, on a sunday. the genius did not really want to deal with me, it seamed. but i had a real issue. i needed actual genius help. he looked at my situation, disappeared in the back, taking my powerbook with him. he reemerged after 15 minutes perhaps, holding the powerbook as well as a little silver organ bag. okay it was one of those antistatic bags. my airport card had come loose, it was not really broken, but the computer would not boot up when the genius tried to stick it into the appropriate slot. the computer would actually not boot up with any card stuck into that slot. the genius recommended that i drop off my powerbook at that shiny new 5th avenue store. i managed to do that, maybe two weeks later. perhaps about a week after my return to new york. (and the new york genius was a bit upset with the santa monica genius btw. since the brilliant guy in california had not recorded our encounter at all. so i was lucky that he did not hand me some other part of the powerbook in a little bag. he could have voided all my warranties.) i somehow suspected that i would not be getting back my powerbook any time soon. and so i got a little mac mini as a replacement buddy for the time when the main computer was out of the house. it is a good mini (it has two brains on a platter, just like me and it is very subtle about things it does, so we really can relate.) it plays very well with most of the software thrown at it. okay, it took several days to open indesign and photoshop plays as if it were 1995 and the mini were my good old quadra 800 which i used to carry in a giant backpack, just to prove that the device was luggable. i bet it is 1000 times faster than my old quadra, it just feels as if things were a bit on the sluggish side with those few adobe applications i should be using all the time. (when i can leave the room to play a round of animal crossing, just so photoshop has time to resize a picture might be a good illustration of what is happening here. i also hear that adobe is on that case. how did apple dare to surprise them with that switch like that.) i still wonder about the apples that traveled to me all the way from new zealand. sometimes it is the best idea to not leave the country perhaps. the apples could probably be much tastier in auckland than after their long travels... in brooklyn. and my powerbook is probably waiting in a shop somewhere in california because of a missing part that needs to be flown in from taiwan, yet is stuck in the airport because it is not allowed to carry any electronic devices on board.