After watching Zombie Girl the other night (which I mentioned yesterday), I put my Macbook Pro to sleep and went to read for a while. I can hardly believe it, but I should have Infinite Jest finished within two weeks.

When I opened the laptop back up later that night, the display was dead. Turns out my laptop is one of the models affected by some manufacturing defect on Nvidia’s part. The video card, which is soldered to the logic board (read: the brains), simply got too hot and melted. Or whatever.

Nothing against Zombie Girl. It was a pretty interesting documentary and makes me sincerely wish that I had had an ounce of Emily’s resolve when I was her age.¹ If you’ve got an hour and a half, you should watch it.

Anyway, I had the laptop repaired at the Apple Store.

Just in case that’s not all that legible, that’s $1622. Dollars.² Luckily, I bought into the $200 Applecare warrantee program when I bought the thing in 2007. Since then, subtracting the initial cost of the plan, It’s saved me more than $2500 in parts and labor.

So anyway, get Applecare.

1. OK, full disclosure. I’m 22 and I still don’t have anything that remotely resembles her kind of resolve. [↑]
2. It also includes a Superdrive replacement, which, as far as I was concerned, wasn’t even broken. [↑]