good news, bad news

Good news: The hotel next door to the administration building of my law school has an Exam Season rate of $59 a night, far less than the $129 advertised on their website or the $89 offered at the Ramada over by Starbucks. I'd been wondering how the hell I was going to manage to get into town for an 8:30 am exam; now I know. I'll already be here. I booked four nights at the reduced rate and will just take the train up the night before. It'll be vaguely lonely, sans husband or pets or stereo, but I'll be glad of it on the morning of an exam when I can get up at seven instead of five and not even have to think about catching a train.

Bad news: My long-suffering Sony laptop seems to be staggering toward the finish line. Its beautiful big display, which was grossly expensive in 1999, is now affected by an odd cross-shaped shadow which my husband attributes to the plastic frame behind the screen. K., on the other hand, says it's a sign and that my laptop is blessed.

That would be nice, but doesn't seem to be the case. Last weekend I noticed that the floppy drive was no longer able to read floppies. It spun and spun and then stopped spinning, and that was that. This wouldn't be a problem, except that the exam software deemed necessary by my school requires a functioning floppy drive.

In other words, unless and until this gets fixed, I can't take my finals on my laptop.

This could present a real problem. I type about a hundred words a minute, and handwrite about twenty-five. The thought of my exam essays being 75% less complete just because of a silly hardware problem is galling at best.

My husband, bless his heart, took both of our laptops apart last night to see if he could figure out the problem with my floppy. His floppy didn't work in my machine, mine didn't work in his, and he eventually concluded that if I couldn't pick up a spare-parts replacement drive at the Sony store at Metreon, it was probably time for me to upgrade.

This should be cause for joy. New laptops are invariably great fun, right? It's just that the timing is all wrong. We're getting into serious crunch season here, with the end of the syllabus in frighteningly close range for nearly all our classes. I need to be outlining like mad, finishing up my reading, starting to take the pile of practice exams which I'll need to get through before the real ones start. I don't have time to play with new toys. And new toys with the fun stripped away from them are hardly toys at all.

*sigh*.

Maybe the floppy will change its mind and start working again. This laptop may, after all, be blessed...

thus spake /jca @ November 19, 2002 10:21 AM