trochee

my laptop is my only link to outside internet right now, whether I am at the hotel (free wifi, but no terminals) or the office (wacky security constraints that allow me to connect, iff I take my laptop into the supply closet).

So you can imagine my panic when the power supply refused to light up. No charge to the laptop means my internet time for the next two weeks is constrained to (1) what I can get to through the webproxy at work (no email, whatsoever) and (2) the battery life of the laptop (very short!).

But I thought about it, and drove down to the impressive Fry's, and looked at replacing the power adaptor. The one option was a generic for $80, and I had the presence of mind to ask a guy there to open one up and see if it had an adaptor for this laptop (it didn't). While I plugged in the thing to show him what wasn't working, it of course decided to charge. I joked with him that I was reluctant to unplug it (true) and I might stay there all night while it charged (false).

But then it occurred to me that maybe it was the AC cord. I went over to the cables and bitty parts department (they don't call it that, but they should, shouldn't they?) and asked around. "Oh, you want the figure-8?" said the guy.

"uh," I said, gracefully. I'm smooth like that.

Then I saw what he meant: the cable from the wall to the heavy little box has a connector that looks like a figure 8 -- if you were going to stick the cable in your eye. Eye-insertion not being my usual mode of cable-observation, that didn't spring to mind. But indeed, he led me straight to a $1.99 black cable that --color notwithstanding-- looked an awful lot like the cheap-ass white cable that trails from the adaptor to the wall. For that price, I bought it on the spot and left.

A good thing, too, because when I got back to the hotel, the AC adaptor still wouldn't light up. I crossed my fingers and replaced that component, considering alternatives (solder, tearing open the little white adaptor box and crossing wires by hand, removing the hard disk from the laptop to rescue files). It lit up immediately and brighter than before.

Laptop rescued, for a grand total of $2.15.