I got my Powerbook back from the Apple Store today…  Thank god for AppleCare…   They not only finished it in less time than they quoted me, but they also noticed that myoptical drive was louder than it should be, figured it was close to failing, and replaced that on their own as well…   In an ideal world, hard disks wouldn’t shit the bed, but I abuse this one quite a bit, so it didn’t surprise me that it died… 

Now after restoring my backup I’m pretty much up and running, although I’m reinstalling all the applications, since I don’t back those up..  I teeter on whether or not to backup apps…  When I don’t, I have to go through this bullshit of reinstalling everything (which is made worse by Comcast being not very Comcastic tonight; I can’t get to several sites), but when I do back them up, they end up needing updating anyway, so I figure it’s a good enema…

Update: So I wasn’t crazy, Comcast was, in fact, being less Comcastic last night…