When I got home today, I noticed that my PowerBook's power light was on and it was making this weird high pitched sound. Alarmed, I removed the battery, which promptly shut off the computer. Then I hooked up all the cables and turned it on. And nothing happened. Worried, I tried disconnecting the cables then turning it on again. Still nothing. Not a sound or any indication that it was doing anything. I tried moving the battery to the other slot, using just the power adapter. All to no avail.

I thought "well, I've fried my PowerBook". Time to buy a new one, like right now. I figured I could buy one from ComputerWare in the morning and transfer my hard drive. But the cost! It would have put me back quite a bit. I went back to the PowerBook and disassembled it and couldn't see anything obviously wrong. Looking at the back, I noticed the instructions to reset something, I think it's the power manager. So I hit shift-control-fn-power for a few seconds and the power light came on. Hit the power button and the familiar chime greeted my ears. Phew! Close one...

So the Tartan Terror chats with me. Once again he is looking for someone to take over his Hudson Leick web site and wonders if I'm interested. Last time I convinced him to keep at it for another six months to see if his dedication would come back. Alas, it didn't work.

Still, I don't think I'm the best person for the job. I design simple web sites and can barely keep my site up to date. I don't think I can properly handle another site. If Tartan can't find someone else willing to do it I can do it. It is a nice site and it would be a shame if it was destroyed. I will want to transfer the site to my local server since it costs $10 a month to maintain. Don't know if my connection and server will be able to handle the load...

In tonight's episode of Opposite Sex, the kids go to New York to participate in the Model UN. Jed leads the team, appointed by their teacher. He says that all the previous winning teams were led by men, so it's about time that the Evergreen team was led by a man. In any case, once in New York Jed meets his old girl friend Lisa who is also here for Model UN.

With Lisa there Jed is once again confused. Does he want to rekindle their old relationship, does he want Kate? Meanwhile, Cary and Stella, who have been at it since the first episode, suddenly find themselves strongly attracted to each other. They're willing to put aside their hatreds for one evening to have sex, but fortunately circumstances prevent it.

Once again, it's scary that these fifteen and sixteen year olds almost have sex every week (and occassionally they do). No, I haven't seen Dawson's Creek. I do like the show though. It's romantic and it's fun and it doesn't remind me of high school at all...

Final topic for the day. Some writer tried to compare Tivo with Napster. Both promise quite a change in the broadcast television and music industries. But while Napster has gotten into legal trouble with RIAA, Tivo has been relatively unmolested by the networks.

To be sure though, it's two different things. Napster encourages piracy. Not just sharing of music, which is fine. But having multiple people own the same paid copy of a song, and being each being able to listen to that copy at the same time in different places. Tivo doesn't have sharing capabilities. Time shifting is legal. You can't really keep programs forever with Tivo, you'll run out of hard drive space (there's enough for about 30 hours of programming).

Napster just filed a brief or something arguing that the music sharing on their network is covered under fair use. Balderdash! At best fair use fair use turns the other way when people pirate music among friends. Once the extent of piracy runs into the hundreds and thousands of people, then it's much clearer that fair use doesn't cover that.