The first part of a big journey

So far this trip has gone pretty good. There have been some challenges, but nothing that couldn't be handled.

My Macbook Pro, Lupin, died.... well more like rebelled after I left work. It was working at work just fine.... I bus to over to Jamie's (with no types of bumps or anything....) and then get to her place and go to turn it on and I hear the apple boot/Wall-E boot sound... and I see NOTHING.

I had already been stressed out that day so I was already a bit on edge, but I took a deep breath and started troubleshooting the issue.

I powered down the laptop, turned it over, took out the battery, pressed the power button to release any power from the capacitors inside, replaced the battery, and then turned on the laptop. Again... I hear the sounds of it working, but no video. I even boot into OS X and can hear myself turning up and down the volume (via the top keys).

So now I know that either the LCD is dead and/or the Video card is fried. Luckily Jamie had a monitor with DVI, so I was able to see if it would boot up and output video to an external monitor. I shutdown the laptop, plug in the DVI and turn the machine on...boot into OS X and it does not auto detect the monitor. The monitor's input indication LED just stays that horrible orange (not green showing it is getting video input). I then try to unplug the DVI for a few minutes, and then plug it back in so it will detect the monitor and no such luck. I have a dead laptop right before a trip in which I had planned to do a lot of blogging, and take a ton of video and pictures. Which I would need to be able to get the pictures and video off of my camera's 8gb and 4gb cards.

Jamie and I had planned to take Jennifer out to dinner and to go see Miyazaki's new film Ponyo (Which is an absolutely ADORABLE movie. GO SEE THE CUTENESS NOW!)... but now with my laptop dead I am stuck in a horrible dilemma 14 hours before my flight to Japan leaves. So we got to get dinner, but did not have time to go see Ponyo as Jamie and I both had things we still needed to get done before the trip.

I had a tough decision to make. Do I use a large chunk of my money to get a new laptop, or just suffer through without it and have a good amount of spending money (Just in case the SOOM store had a Heliot I could get)? I had planned to sell my old laptop when I could then immediately go out and buy a new laptop. I was also stuck with the problem that I had not decided if I wanted the mid/high 15" Pro or the high 17" Pro. I ended up deciding on the mid level 15" Pro. There was no real need for the excess and I didn't have the extra money to spend. I also had wanted to get this really cute yellow case for my new Macbook Pro when I got it, but at this store I only had the choices of orange, or hotel carpet green. Neither of which were my favorite by any means. I ended up choosing the orange case.

Then I had to decide whether or not it was worth it to go all the way to my place in order to get my Time Machine HDD so I could re-image this new laptop with it. Luckily I had just done a backup the night before (which left me only missing some time lapse video I had done of me packing and somehow pictures from my last meetup with Darby, Kelly, Jeff, and Ryan at the Space Needle) so Jennifer was nice enough to take me all the way from Kirkland to my place to get my Hard Drives and a skirt Jamie wanted to borrow....

We get back to Kirkland and I start the process of restoring the new laptop from a Time Machine backup (which went superbly smooth!). So I chit-chat doll stuff with Jennifer while we wait for the restoring to finish, and I suddenly realize that after we had already made a special trip to my place... I had forgotten to pack THE most important item to have... My effin PASSPORT!

So Jennifer again was very gracious to take me to my apartment on yet another trip to get my Passport (And my face jewels for Mana!) We get back to Kirkland (again) and my Time Machine restore finishes and I find there are a ton of updates to do, which I get done.

Wow, this is one of the longer blogs I have written, and my attention span is waining T_T. REPO! The Genetic Opera is distracting me, hehe. I think I may finish this at a later time.

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