This Blog Post will be of no importance to you.

Some blogging is informational in nature and some blogging is simply cathartic.  Spleen-venting if you will.  This is definitely the latter.

My laptop is toast. Sacrificed to the Starbuck's Gods in a spectacularly clumsy manner by yours truly.  Protip: an entire Venti Skinny Peppermint Mocha and a computer do not make good dance partners.  After moving (in my wife's words) "faster than I've seen you move in years" I was able to get the computer inverted on top of paper towels fairly quickly, but not quick enough.

It will start-up, slowly, with an odd clicking sound that I assume is something fighting through the sugary, sticky goo that's probably enveloped most of my mother board and every other critical component, but the keyboard is only partially functional, and the parts that are not working are (of course) the parts that contain most of the keys I need for my password.

My plan is to take it to a PC repair shop and see if they can take it apart and get it functional again.  I'm sure they see this all the time right? And, if not, at least they can extract the files from my hard drive. Fortunately I've already uploaded all of my travel pictures to my Flickr account, but I do have notes on the C drive for some articles I have coming due fairly soon.

Then there's what to do if it can't be resuscitated?  Do I bit the bullet and buy a new computer?  Or do I obtain a new cover for my iPad with a blue-tooth keyboard and utilize that?  I'm a fan of the iPad as a toy, but I can't see it doubling as an everyday work horse computer.  Plus, I'd be losing MS Office tools that I really like using due to their power and flexibility. I'm sure iApple's productivity tools are fine, and I hear they can even be saved in an MS Office usable form, but are they as powerful as Excel and Word?  Is Open Office compatible with iApple?  I'm going to have to look that up.

There was a (print only) story by Loren Steffy in a recent issue of the Houston Chronicle (it recently went on-line here) where Mr. Steffy talked about the struggles Dell and HP are having staying a-float in the new mobile computing world.  While I disagree with Steffy on many macro-economic issues, his piece here was spot on.  Even though I still think the iPad is a toy it's a useful toy that, along with my Android phone, has replaced my need for a netbook when traveling.  That I'm even considering trying to make it my go-to computing device speaks volumes about how marginalized the PC has become.

That said, there's still something to be said for the power of a home PC and the need to have a machine that can do the heavy lifting.  So, despite my thoughts to the contrary I'm probably going to bite the bullet and buy another laptop should this one prove to be totally dead.  I'm going to look at one of those ToughBooks though, there's no cure for clumsy that I'm aware of.