Will a MacBook Pro stop bullets?

Cynthia's Dell laptop is feeble and dying and needs to be put to rest, so I've been keeping an eye out for a replacement for her. Not replacing Cynthia, I mean replacing her laptop. ANYWAY, I spotted a deal on craigslist yesterday for a MacBook Pro that an Iowa student is selling because the WiFi on it started flaking out. It's got an ethernet port, so it can connect to the internet that way until we get the WiFi fixed. Cynthia mostly keeps her laptop on her desk at home and doesn't really carry it around, so a repair may not even be necessary.

I got a hold of the dude who was selling the MacBook and he gave me his address in Iowa City so that I could stop by on my lunch break and check it out (since I work in Iowa City). If you're not familiar with Iowa City, it has a reputation for being kind of a snooty place for being a small town in the middle of Iowa. (Apologies to anyone from Iowa City reading this. If you're cool enough to be reading my blog, then you obviously are immune to the uppity vibe there. ;) It's a town full of pseudo-intellectuals as well as a handful of truly smart people. The signs posted on roads entering Iowa City indicating that nuclear weapons are prohibited by city ordinance give some indication of the ridiculousness you should expect there. Not that I usually bring my nukes to work with me, but the fact that I have to be told not to bring them puts me out.

The address that I drove to turned out to be a large campus of apartment complexes in an area that stood in stark contrast with the rest of the town. Lots of people wandered aimlessly around in the middle of the road glaring at anyone who passed by and Caddys with oversized rims filled the parking lots. Each apartment had its own entrance – sort of like an old motel – and some had broken windows. There were broken bicycles and trash scattered about. There were people everywhere; not going anywhere or doing anything, just standing around watching. It felt like they were all waiting for something, it was very strange. It was very quiet, except for a couple of people a block away yelling at each other and the faint thump of music from an apartment nearby.

After parking the car, I walked along a sidewalk between two buildings as I looked for the apartment number that MacBook Dude had given me. A door swung open and a Muslim woman with a scarf around her head stood in the doorway and looked at me as if I was expected. She closed the door again after I walked by. A guy across the courtyard got up and quickly went inside. If this were a movie, I think this is about the part where the shooting starts.

I ducked around the corner and saw the apartment number I was looking for. Of course, it was almost the very last apartment and on the side of the building facing away from the parking lot. MacBook Dude was friendly, which made him seem out of place. The laptop turned out to be as described and worked fine, so I paid for it and began the scenic trek back. A group of guys standing along the sidewalk stopped talking and all turned and glared as I walked toward the car which made me wonder, Will a MacBook Pro stop bullets? It wouldn't even be a problem if I would have been allowed to bring a nuke with me. Thanks for that, Iowa City.

Unplugged

On April 18th, a very close friend of mine passed away. My Mac Pro tower went to be with Steve Jobs after a short battle with memory loss. I don't think it was in any pain; it just froze up and then displayed a blank white screen. On the plus side, an Apple tech was able to fix it and bring it back. Two weeks and $683 later it is working fine as if nothing ever happened. My life has been changed forever, though.

The first 24 hours after it died, I went through withdrawal wondering about all the emails I was getting that I couldn't read and agonizing over the senior portraits that I had just shot that I couldn't finish until it was fixed. I'm a news junkie, too, so the sudden disconnect from the outside world really hurt. Plus, there were so many other time-waster things that I had grown accustomed to doing on the computer and then I was left with nothing to do but use my brain (which I am not accustomed to).

I was left with lots of time to read books, sit on the front porch, stare at the neighbors (in a really creepy, unhealthy sort of way), and daydream about what the world would be like if some bands didn't exist. Like, what if I could travel back in time and assassinate a bunch of bands to prevent them from ever recording crappy, formulaic, middle-of-the-road rock? I would start by taking out the obvious bands like Creed, Nickelback, and Puddle of Mudd. And I couldn't just stop there, I mean, that leaves Pearl Jam, Limp Bizkit, and many others. Er, maybe not everyone in Pearl Jam, just Eddie Vedder.

This brings up a question: by altering the past this way, how would that affect the present? I would assume that after preventing these awful bands from unleashing their horrible music on society, we would all find ourselves here in 2012 as incredibly smart supermodel millionaires. How? I dunno, but I imagine that's how it would pan out.

Anyway, the things mentioned above are a small sampling of what my brain does when it is not silenced by a computer. It's been a rough couple of weeks and I'm so glad to be back online.