A few days ago (probably on Macbookless – Day Two) I remembered what right clicking is. I kept automatically alt clicking and not knowing why nothing was happening.

Have I mentioned that this laptop has NO battery? There is physically a battery in it, but it doesn’t do anything. If the power cord disconnects for more than two seconds then the whole thing shuts down.

I think I’ve figured out the limits of this computer. I can have at most two programs open (Firefox and Pidgin, although I did open Adobe Reader once, that was a trial in patience. I am not Job.) In Firefox I can have four tabs, but none of the pages can have embedded audio or video – java and flash are the kiss of death. Usually any sort of moving or singing thing will crash my browser, but it doesn’t crash quickly. It freezes, and when I try to force quit it takes another 5 minutes or so. If I have more than four tabs open, I get the virtual memory dump balloon. I’ve uninstalled the memory sucking programs that run secretly in the background, but I guess I either have missed a few, or there really is just not enough memory to handle five tabs.

I stayed away from the PC today, mostly because of a killer migraine, but also I started to get into the Picoult book. I still don’t love it. I realized one of my problems with it is I picture Cameron Diaz every time there is a chapter written from the mother’s perspective. I have a love/hate relationship with Ms. Diaz (Being John Malkovich = love, There’s Something About Mary = hate, her political and social activism = love and hate – it’s kind of endearing because she seems to be trying so hard, but it also feels like she’s that girl from your high school that suddenly became really passionate about something because she saw it on Oprah). I know this isn’t fair to Ms. Picoult, but I can’t undo it now, and I doubt I’d like the mother character anyway. Sometimes I like when chapters are written from different character’s perspectives, but it’s not really working for me with this book. I find myself dreading chapters written by certain characters, and the whole thing just seems overly dramatic. I keep getting a sense of “this is really serious you guys!” underneath all her writing. I get it, it’s serious. Quit trying to convince us and just keep that plot going. I think the 23-hour headache has made me overly harsh. I understand that Ms. Picoult has an often-hospitalized child of her own (just from the book jacket, I didn’t do any other research, I’m not ready to hear her story because I don’t want it to influence my impression of the book), and I guess that if I was a person who had an experience similar to the mother in the book or Ms. Picoult then I might feel differently. I might feel that affirmation that comes from reading a story that expresses the thought and feelings you can’t, but I don’t feel that way.

</whining>

Addendum
Upon reviewing my post, I realized that the Oprah comment was unnecessarily snotty. Although I’m not all about celebrities telling us that we can be fabulous if we’d just make all the choices they do – Gwynnie, I’m looking in your direction – it’s unfair of me to criticize the catalyst for one’s politicization. As a feminist, and a person who has formally studied gender for the past decade, it is especially heinous for me to make such a meanie-pants observation. So I apologize. Go ahead, become politicized through Oprah, but please, do some more research – like listening to NPR, because as all good liberals know – everything on NPR can be taken as gospel. 😉