Mac Attack

So I got a little crazy this week and bought a computer, because I have nothing better to do than spend my life's savings (that, and agree like a dumbass to work four extra hours on a Friday when a) we are short a nurse b) three patients are sick enough to be sent to the unit between 11a-3p, including one of mine c) we get seven admissions between 3p-11p, two of which were mine).

And my not-so-trusty and barely a year old Averatec laptop has been dying a slow, painful, non-morphine-drip-aided death-by-battery-and-fan-and ac-adapter-issues, in my non-professional diagnostic opinion. It finally gave up the ghost on Tuesday, having gotten hot enough to meld the male part of the ac adaptor to the computer port. (Ouch!)

So I decided, armed with nothing but gut instinct and the rumor heard sometime in the past that "Apples don't crash as much as PCs" that I'd strike out from PCworld into unfamiliar computer territory, and get a Mac. Aided by my trusty, interest-free-for-fifteen-months credit card, today I bravely purchased a 15" screen Powerbook G4.

All PC users may now make mockery of me, but I'm happy, any way. And it's not that the little Averatec was bad or anything (I blame the notorious Microsoft Windows for most of my issues; not that it didn't have it's own remarkable construction faults). It certainly didn't crash-and-burn in the grand, great-balls-of-fire tradition of my old Toshiba (which has long since made it's way to Laptop Heaven, or Hell, whichever way you prefer to think of it). But I wasn't so happy about the crappy battery life, nor the noxious and rather alarming smell of burning plastic emitting from my computer on Tuesday afternoon, either.

Why an expensive computer with specs I don't even understand? Well, why not, I say. Why not say "yes" to gratutious and extravagant electronicware purchases? I can't justify it, just like I can't justify why it feels good to spend a long time in the shower, luxuriating in world eco-system depleting first world decadence, or eating a slab of milk chocolate or sleeping in an extra three hours on a sunny Sunday.

Knowing next to nothing about computers, and relying heavily on the old fashioned notion that it seems more prudent to buy quality at a heftier pricetag than suffer the results of a thrifty but ill-constructed piece of hardware, it just seemed like a good idea, and I'm happy, and what's a few extra hours at work to pay for more gigaws and gimmicky jazzy things I won't even use, right? It does come with a DVD burner, and when I get Roxio's Toast 7, I should be able to add to my skimpy DVD collection, as well as make home videos with my nonexistent camcorder.

Ah, it's the old Catholic justification-by-guilt-mental-mind-tricks, coming back to haunt me. What theological maneuvering. (Well, really, it's all-too-human-rationalization, but whatever).

Pictures later; I'm tired and need to calibrate the battery on this bad boy.