Looking In Briefly

Spent a good chunk of this vacation day sleeping. Then we had to go into Salem to run some errands. Finally, we got the computer set up in my father-in-law's house to make sure it still worked.

One of my laptop batteries has died. Not discharged; died, as in will not recharge and displays error codes when you run its diagnostics. I wrote to Dell support, and as I expected, they told me that the battery is a consumable item with a one year warranty. The battery is more than a year old, so it's a write-off. Fortunately, we had five batteries for the two working laptops, so we probably don't even need to buy another battery. (Lisa disassembled the busted laptop, salvaging any usable parts and throwing the rest away.) The other four batteries all test good on their internal diagnostics. No telling why the one went bad.

None of my laptop batteries are on the recall list. It's sort of a pity that the now-dead battery wasn't on the list; Dell would have replaced it if it was.

I don't expect to get on-line on Friday, which will break a very long string of consecutive posting days, as I recall. Maybe I'll post a backdated entry later.

More Bricks in the Wall

There were some new comments on this thread about convention membership prices that had to wait until I was on-line again becuase they were anonymously posted and I screen such posts. However, I think some of you following my writing here will want to go back and read the new comments.

Dave Stewart, R.I.P.

One of the pieces of information in my e-mail when I logged back on for the first time in 27 hours or so was that Irish fan David Stewart had lost his battle with cancer. More details here and here.

I met Dave in my work as a division manager for Interaction, where he ran the Promotions Division. He worked hard on the convention and contributed much to fandom. I agree with other people who have written about him that had he not been struck down, he would have been an ideal TAFF candidate.

Fandom is less rich today than it was two days ago.