A man walked into a bar, ouch!

With gags like that I've a shot at the big time!

"One of the updates has to do with the battery, so maybe that will magically make everything work again."

It never happens...:)

KJ

Or, you could buy a PC laptop. The Sony mini-Vaio are quite sex-xay... :)

*Sends Wil some good iBook mojo*

***virtual chicken soup*** for Nolan and Ms. iBook. :)

Dear Wil,

Those are 2 of my favorite albums of all time. It makes my think you are even cooler now that I know you appreciate them as well.

--Tricia in New Orleans

Dude, men and women tend to lose their gender identity as they enter their 70's and 80's. As my mother-in-law faded to cancer she looked more and more like her brother, so it's no surprise that Strom Thurmond's daughter (at 78 years old) is going to look like a guy.

Maybe a good solution to your iBook problems can be found at www.dell.com.

;)

ahhh do not fret little William, your readers wont forsake you if you flounder for a while in the relative hell that is non blogging. We are loyal doncha know
*nods vigerously and set up camp with boards saying "We Luv Will" hastily knocked up*

Wil,
I had a similar problem with my iBook a few months ago. If you press the batery check button on the battery itself, does it show no charge (ie no dots light up)? I could use my iBook if it was plugged in, but if I tried to unplug it it died.

I had to contact Apple and they sent me a new battery within days. Even though I didn't have the Apple Care extended warranty the machine itself is covered for a year. The folks there were very helpful.

I'd give Apple a call or take it in if you have an Apple store near by.

Disneyland!! Cool! That would be the first place I'd go if I went to California!

i DON'T have the POWER!!!

Wil I had a problem with some HP's I was working on locking up when running off the battery, but were fine off the AC. Turns out the batteries were forked, replaced them and presto.. problem solved...

Mike

have a lovely holiday Wil, and say healthy!

heh. im glad someone said it. i live in south carolina and god forbid if anyone speaks evil of their precious strom thurmond. he was a pig, and knowing that he had a biracial daughter, yet still acted the way he did towards the african-american community just makes me ill. he sure wasnt too concerned when he seduced that poor woman!
ugh.
anyhow, i hope nolan feels better soon. i dont really get sick, but now that ive said it, im sure i will be soon!
have a good day wil, and get your ibook fixed!
=)
jeannette

I hope your ipod gets fixed soon it looks like its real handy Happy Holidays to you and your family.

Hahahaha, just as I read the line "like School House Rock without the singing," "Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here" by Buffalo Tom came up on my iPod. What an odd coincidence...

Strom Thurmond quote-

"She walks well, she looks good. Let’s see how she kisses."

— In 1947 as governor, after placing a crown on the head of Miss South Carolina.

I just LOVE that you're promoting Powell's. It's the best store in the world (most definitely here in Portland). Any bookstore that you need a map to navigate is alright by me!We have our fingers crossed that they won't strike.

And I have to agree about Plainsong. I love to listen to it with headphones on and just become enveloped in the intro. It's amazing!

mmm ... depeche mode black celebration is THE album that got me into that entire genre of music. good choice!

If you have it (or can get it), check out Depeche Mode's Ultra. "Home" is a track that can be played over and over and over. Actually, the entire album is like that, although probably more somber than what you are looking for right now.

I feel so "in the know" today. I have the same taste in music, but I don't know the songs on Disintigration by title, I just listen to my "Alt80s" playlist without noticing albums or titles. But after reading Wil's description of a chain pulling his heart skyward, my first instict was "just to feel my heart for a second." What a powerfull song. The other one that always, always affects me is "Just Like Heaven." Deliriously Happy and then bittersweet. I could ramble on about this for hours.

Wil,
Battery thing. Have you booted into Open Firmware and reset things there? I've had strangeness before, and that worked.
When it first starts booting, I believe it's Apple-Option-O-F, then type 'reset-nvram' at the prompt, then 'reset-all'.
That has unhorked me a couple of times.

Best of luck.
-Met.

I have a lot more respect for Strom Thurmond's daughter than I did for him. She kept quiet out of respect to her father's stature; too bad he couldn't return the favor and respect people of her race more.

Anyway, cool stuff about the "how to get a book deal" from blogging. I'm actually looking around for a new publisher (growing rapidly unhappy about my current one), so I read that with great interest.

Keep on keepin' on Wil. I'm jealous that you can head to WallyWorld anytime... it's been a while since we had a visit with The Mouse.

You lucky dog that you live close to go to DisneyLand I am glad that you had fun. I still think you should call Leo either CFH or TSS. Maybe he can help you with your ibook problem.

how cool is it that wil likes Plainsong..
damn that rocks...
i think that whole album is a work of genious..
particularly 'closing down' 'Disintegration' and 'Last Dance'

also agree with that 'just like heaven' is incredible..
makes you feel all giddy and bittersweet at the same time..
:)

cheers
tyson

Will,

I finaly got an update in my e-mail that you had done an update...

when I got here I see that youhad done a whole BUNCH of updates.

I was going to say to keep doing whatever it was that you did to get me that e-mail updated on your update. Then I remembered that I changed my 'junk mail' filters... I bet that is what got your updates working!

HOW DARE ANYONE THING THAT YOUR UPDATE WAS JUNK MAIL!

I'll jus thave to have a talk with Bill, and het him to fix hotmail I suppose.

anyway, every thing is working fine, thanks for the updates.

I'll be a regular reader now.

"Is it just me, or does Strom Thurmond's daughter look like a dude in bad drag?"

Literally the first thought that came to my mind when I saw her on CNN two days ago! Guess Strom's ugly-man gene was very dominant.

Wil.. what a cool description of the way Plainsong makes you feel...

I love that song, and your words put an almost exact target on the way it makes me feel when I listen to it, but I could never have said it as eloquently as you.

I came to check on the site and see what was new, but also, I wanted to link you to this cool (and entertaining) blog of a person who was a porn video clerk for a year and some.. it's very well written and quite funny...

I hope that you will enjoy it! (haha)

http://www.improvisation.ws/mb/tpcs1.php

Personally, I think she IS Strom Thurmond after genetic modification and a sex change.

Seriously though...Strom Thurmond took advantage of an underage girl (isn't that rape now?). If he had truly "respected" her then he would have publically acknowledged her as his child a long time ago. The poor woman should regret being part of his gene pool.

>>>Is it just me, or does Strom Thurmond's daughter look like a dude in bad drag?

That's a rather nasty comment to make about an elderly woman who has just been thrust into the media spotlight based on the fact that her father (who happens to be famous) was ashamed of her existence and didn't raise her.

Ahh Mac's... gotta hate 'em. Someone mentioned above about liking the Sony Vaio and I am with them on that, I have one of the V505's (super slim model's) and it has worked like a charm! (I have had numerous problems with HP's, Compaq's, Toshiba's and Dell's over the years!) The Vaio is the only that can hadle my work load without crashing, locking-up, or just going crazy! (I have had to send it in for the keyboard and mouse once though)But software/processor-wise they are the most stable I have had ever in a laptop!

RE: Is it just me, or does Strom Thurmond's daughter look like a dude in bad drag?

Yes, but to clarify....it's "RuPaul: The Senior Years". LOL!

For me, it's "Same Deep Water as You" from the same album. I close my eyes and I'm gone for the next 8 minutes.....

Random-ish: My high school year book had a space for quotes under the senior pictures and this was mine: "Life's more fun when you're easily amused."
Truth, eh?
YAY for Disneyland! I love that palce, always have. Even though some aspects of it that I like have been a bit Eisnerized...heh.
I was there last month and saw the haunted Mansion in its holiday getup for the first time and I agree with you, it kicks some mad ass!So, in readin that you made a trip to DCA and only went on Soarin', does that mean that you too share the opinion that that ride is currently the only worthwhile one there for native Californians? (Or anyone?)
Cause the whole park seems like a fakey version of a lot of the cool real stuff in California when people could just go to the real thing when they're already here.It was exciting though when Iw as here to see the progress on the Tower of Terror.
When me and my dad were on the Disneyland railroad we saw them testing the levator thingy. it was cool.
The funny part is my mom had been sick so she was so out of it she'd thought the Tower was a real hotel. o.O
Yeah, don't mind me. I like D-Land way too much for my own good.
Do you get stopped a lot and public places like that that aren't conventions and signings and stuff? I'd always wondered...
Anyway, good luck with your computer troubles and whatnot. :-)

Wil, that "dude in bad drag" comment was pretty harsh. Your feelings about Strom aside, that was a mean thing to say about a 78-year-old woman, let alone a woman who has gone her whole life basically without a father.

You're not that mean, are you?

The root of the problem may lie in using an iBook. And try not to feel bad about needing professional help: even doctors go to the doctor :o)

hey wil, hope things get better with your iBook!

DisneyLand RULES!!!! i hvaen't been for ages!! i miss it! tee hee

well, have fun,
rach

Just wanted to say how much I love the Haunted Mansion when it's all decked out with The Nightmare Before Christmas stuff. I love that movie, and the ride.

I feel your pain, Wil. Recently, a friend gave me an older PC so I could get back to business (my old one died Easter night of this year). Well, she said it had problems, but I figured that the cheap hard drive she used was to blame. Boy, was I wrong.

Every few days, the machine likes to scramble directory names and totally chew the file allocation tables to shreds. Why? I have no clue. It's not a virus, I've repartitioned and zapped the boot sector several times between installing 98SE and Mandrake 9.2, the former I've done four times since I got this machine last month.

I can't for the life of me figure this box out. Hope you have better luck with your iBook.

Oh! Before I forget, once again you're the king of Fark Photoshop contests! Check out this thread, first entry after the original. I think that sums up all our feelings about your ending up on the cutting room floor for Nemesis...

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=757197

Hey Wil,

I am going offline for a month to spend some time with my family and wont be able to keep up with your site. So, I thought I'd make my 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New year' cry in the dark now.

You've had a wonderful year and I have loved having a glimpse into it and being involved in the fantastic community that you have cultured and steered so well.

So, to you and your family I say Merry Christmas and an even more productive WWDN New Year.

Best Wishes

Ben

Blackout days for me. Damn. No haunted mansion.

hey wil.. ust went to blogger.com look like they know about your 3 book deal.. your front page news!

that should've been you're instead of your.. I’m slowly but surely losing my basic cognitive functions.

I also just re read your last post and realized this is old news. I'm just having a bad day.
/ignore me

The Haunted Mansion Holiday is great! I work for Disney, and I was amazed at what they were capable of with that ride. Despite lots of other problems, Disney just does some things so well.

I've been looking into computers lately. Thanks for your help in figuring out what to get. Dude, I'm getting a dell!

BTW: Finally got around to reading Dancing Barefoot. Very awesome book. Good job.

Just something I had to say. Good luck with the comp and here's more *virtual chicken soup* for nolan!

Wil, the exact same thing happened to my laptop in October. The computer dude said that it was a virus, and unfortunately, it had fried my hard drive and I had to replace it. I had Norton on it, but these viruses are increasingly sophisticated! Hope that is not the case for you!

Happy Holidays!
Katie

get a g4 and all your problems will be solved. or wait for the g5 and you won't know what a problem is.

Sorry for the delay, but I have been catching up on old blog posts. Hey, I noticed in an older post that you had going to california on a mix disk.

If you ever get the chance. check out "Never The Brides" cover of "Going To California".

Its on the enconium Zepplin tribute disk.

You will not be dissapointed.

One of the few times in my life I can honestly say a cover sounded better than the original.

Shadow

I'm curious, did somebody force you to make a derogatory comment about Strom Thurmond's daughter?

I guess nobody has ever made derogatory comments about you. If they had, you would know how much it hurts when it gets back to you.

I don't think she has much control over her alleged masculine looks.

Disney WORLD is better!! MWAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!

School house rock is the BOMB baby..

It doesn't get any better than "Violator". I've bought -- subsequently lost -- and re-bought that disc more than any other.

Reach out and touch faith.

Why dont you just reverse the polarity wil?
surely that would fix it.(your iBook)
Its Geordis answer to everything.
(sorry, ive just been watchin star trek all night and im still thinkin on ST terms.)

I compleatly agree with Ron.
but because i like you so much im going to overlook that remark and call it a bad lapse of concentration and memory.

tis the season to be jolly!
dont you know its Christmas?

"Is it just me, or does Strom Thurmond's daughter look like a dude in bad drag?"
Kinda like John Goodman dressed like Linda Tripp?
/got ya a window seat, i'll take the aisle.

Same music taste. w00t!

Dude, get Floored Genius by Julian Cope.

I’m on my second Vaio 505 super slim. The first one (400 Mhz)I bought in Jan 2000 and the second one (2Ghz) this summer - no trouble from either.

"Is it just me, or does Strom Thurmond's daughter look like a dude in bad drag?"

Yes, she shows the effects of her 78 years. When watching her with Dan Rather on 60 min II though she came across as well spoken and grandmotherly. I would like to see a picture of her at a younger age.
Thurmon, on the other hand, looked about as good as most 100 year olds.

On the subject of Strom Thurmon – I too live in South Carolina – having moved here at age thirty and about that long ago. I will assure you that contrary to the impression given in an earlier post, Thurmon had/has many detractors in this state – as would anyone in politics – and he was a VERY controversial politician. A large part of this animosity was due to two major changes in his politics. He accepted the civil rights legislation once it became law and he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party while the former was still extremely conservative in South Carolina.
His change wasn’t just lip service either. He was among the first in Congress in the nation to hire African Americans to his staff.
Diehard segregationists hate him for his about face on civil rights, and many Democrats hate him for leaving their party and then beating them for years and years and years.
So how did he do that?
There’s only one way – he had to get a lot of votes from moderate Democrats and people of color.
I read a few years ago in Parade magazine, that Strom Thurmon had the most responsive constituent assistance system in congress. Parade also said that while most politicians treated their staffers poorly, Thurmon was just the opposite, maintaining contact and providing help to staffers even long after they had left his employ. This resulted in an extremely loyal and influential network of former associates.

The events of the last few days have caused me to do a lot of research and left me amazed of this complex man.
Remember that at the time of her birth there was no DNA test to prove paternity. Many men and boys who got women pregnant just walked away, leaving the woman to bear the child and the at that time heavy stigma of illegitimacy.
So in light of this, Thurmon’s subsequent actions don’t seem to fit the seduction of the maid theory too well. I’m more inclined to believe the one with the two impetuous young lovers who imprudently forgot the kind of society in which they were living ….
Oh well, I guess we’ll have to wait for the book and the movie.
Maybe Will can play the 22 year old Strom.

Whooooooooaahhhh. WW listens to Depeche Mode, I am amazed!

Violator is one of the best albums EVER. I highly recommend Dave Gahan's solo album Paper Monsters too, check out http://www.davegahan.com/audio/index.html to listen to samples of the tracks.

Make sure you clear the PRAM on the iBook often. You can also try replacing the cache. I did this on an old Mac PowerPC and it now works beautifully.

Regarding iBook problems: my wife's iBook had a similar problem a little while ago, and after running every diagnostic known to man, I finally gave up and called Apple. They said, "Sounds like the battery's dead. We'll send you a new one!" and sure enough, it worked perfectly.

No amount of low-level Unix mastery can help you when your hardware fails. I wasted a week on my fiddlings, compared to two days waiting for a new battery. Someone told me that's what tech support is FOR, but I still don't believe them.

But if it makes you feel any better, my friend's new Dell laptop lasted two whole weeks before it took itself out in a puff of smoke. So by comparison, your laptop-turned-desktop (essentially) is almost a gift, right? :)

Wil,
I do all of my writing in OpenOffice myself. If I am blogging I simply...

1. Write the entry in OpenOffice
2. Spellcheck etc
3. Paste into MT and add any links I want to add
4. Save and enjoy.

This saves the hassles out of spending too much time manually checking spelling and lets me get my thoughts out fast and furious. Hope this helps, but you have probably already considered and rejected the idea.

- Mitch

Black Celebration and Disintegration.
Those two have never left my rotation for more than a few weeks since they came out. I'm more of a Music for the Masses man, with Depeche, though.

The older I get, the more amused and amazed I am by the ability that shared music has to create a bond with people my own age. When we reach the point where we all have some little device on us that lets us beam text files to each other, everyone should just carry around a 20 favorite bands/albums list. 90% of the time, I can tell whether or not I'm gonna like someone by knowing what music they listen to. It's not that I screen people based on that, but you can tell a ton about shared attitudes and experiences from what people listen to.

I recently posted something in my livejournal to the effect that if there's a mutual attraction between me and a girl and she was into The Pixies before 1992 or Joy Division before 1989, I'll probably fall for her.

I usually enjoy reading your site, Wil, but your comment about Strom Thurmond's daughter was gratuitiously mean. Definitely not in the holiday spirit. I know it's your blog and your thoughts and everything, but I don't think Ms. Washington-Williams deserved that particular one. She's probably getting enough flak as it is.

wil,

have you tried zapping the PRAMs?

when you first power on the iBook, hold down command+option+P+R. keep holding them until you hear the startup chime a second time. that might help.

grant

Wil, I discovered your website a couple of months ago. I have enjoyed following your life process. Although I am not a geek, I am a huge David Sedaris fan so I am looking forward to reading your book (whenever I can get my hands on it!) Happy holidays to you and yours.

She looks like... Strom Thurmond.

So yes.

Will,
Try this fix for your iBook:
1) With the iBook OFF, remove the battery, and connect the A/C adapter.
2) Power the iBook on, and immediately hold down Apple-Option-O-F and hold those buttons down until you hear a low, single tone.
3) Release they keys. Your laptop should boot into the Open Firmware screen (white screen with black text).
4) At the prompt, type in the following:

reset-nvram
reset-all

The iBook should restart after that. once it comes up, shut it down completely, put the battery back in, and leave the laptop alone for an hour to see if the battery charges. If the A/C adapter detects the battery and tries to charge it, the ring around the end of the power adapter should glow orange instead of green. After the hour is up, start the iBook up and unplug the A/C adapter to see if it will stay on. There's a known problem with some of the MacOS updates throwing a programming switch off in Open Firmware that prevents the battery from being recognized.

You can read more about this at MAC OS X Hints, and the fix I found can be read about at:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030731115309803&query=battery+reset

BTW, i'm an Apple Certified Portable Technican and work for a large school district in Ohio. We've had a few iBooks with similar problems and if the battery itself isn't shot, this should fix the problem you're running into.

Good luck!

I just love how you have to 'trick' your mac's to get them to work for you. Press this button for x number of seconds while holding your breath and rubbing your tummy in a counter-clockwise motion.

Why not just get a copy of Yellow Dog and put Linux on it... ?

"Mac or PC?" - "Linux". LOL! That was great.

This is slightly off topic, but since there are a lot of mac users here,you may want to read some hysterically funny Christian propaganda about how your Imac is a tool of the devil, and communist to boot. You can find it here:

http://objective.jesussave.us/propaganda.html

I have been laughing at this sight for days. The Kidz section is priceless. :)

Strom means a tree in Slavic.

Some trees are even ugly when covered with Christmas decorations...

Ah...Biz Stone does rock!

I had the exact same problem with my iBook. It was sent back to apple, given a new logic board, and no longer has these problems and hasn't crashed since. The various reset-power-manager and reset-nvram things probably aren't helping; you should just send it in for repair.

Andrew
(still boggled by all the folks who think they should convince you to get the kind of computer they have)

Agree with most that your comment re: Strom Thurmond's daughter was not nice. But I still like you.

Joyous Yuletide.

Hmmm...blogger gets book-deal...A dream fulfilled...hopefully...If obsession is the way, then by god, I might just do it...hmmm...

http://www.xanga.com/skin.asp?user=pointblank42

i had a similar problem with my gf's laptop when restarting. it wouldn't wake up after it was restarted or if you closed the top and it went to sleep.
try takin a pencil and boinkin the little reset nub next to the sound jack. (left side..the hard restart button)
it makes a little "click "and then it restarts. that might not be the problem. or the solution.but i thought it might help. it worked for me.
nice site.
good luck with yer computer.

Can you just give us a little taste of the Haunted Mansion? I really wanted to make it out there for the holiday, but it seems like I'm stuck in web dev in Nowhere, Ohio until sometime in Feb...
Thanks!

iBooks suck. At least mine does. I'm on logic board #14. No logic board has ever lasted me over three months, and several have lasted less than a month. On the bright side, Apple has replaced the whole machine three times, so I started with a 500 MHz 2001 Dual USB iBook, and now I'm on a 2003 900 MHz 32 VRAM model. After this next logic board replacement, it will probably be an iBook G4.

The really odd thing is that my partner has a 500MHz iBook identical to my first one, and his has been trouble-free for almost three years. So that kind of rules out environment, electrical power, peripherals (we share them all) and just about any other external factor. All I can figure is that I must put out some kind of strange lavender aura with little spikes of black lightning or something.

We love it when people like coming to Disneyland, though as someone who has to work there let me just say that the more of you who put off your trip till after Jan 1st, the happier many of us will be.

Wil, next year go to the HMH preview night; this year they had some really terrific stuff going on. If you like that kind of thing.

Please also note that you are now the fourth celebrity type who managed to come to Disneyland on one of the very few days I don't work, who I actually would have liked meeting. I should have tried to get a shift that day, but I was too busy trying to wake up after camping out for LOTR.

Folks who wanted to know about the HM event, I think that MiceAge.Com and LaughingPlace.Com still have pictures up. I don't know about MousePlanet; they might have stuff too.

this is a little late, and your ibook may already be up and running, but i thought i'd offer my 2¢.
i know this may sound too easy, but have you tried replacing the CMOS battery?