Speaking of the little guy, the other day just as I picked him up right next to Rona’s laptop, which didn’t have the cool waterproof cover on the keyboard, he yacked all over the upper left portion of the keys. As it happens, a significant subset of the tab, 1, 2, 3, q, w, e, a, and s keys tend to come up a lot in the everyday use of a computer. It’s sort of a bummer when they don’t work due to yackage. I called up Applecare, and was informed that fixing such a disaster would require sending in the computer, would run over $600, and isn’t covered by the warranty. He said I could take it in to a non-authorized Apple fixit place and they could likely set it right for a lot cheaper, but that would void the warranty and the extended warranty. Nice. Wisely, or luckily, I opted to instead take it in to the University Village Apple Store. The nice Genius chick at the Genius Bar listened to my explanation, said she could just replace the keyboard for $65, that they had one in stock, and that she would waive the $85 labor fee because I told the truth. (Apparently most people have "no idea" why their keyboard stops working, and then the repair techs find moldy Coke under the keys.) They fixed the laptop while we did a little shopping and Blue-C-Sushiing, and called to say it was done while we were still in the restaurant. So, the Yack Incident set us back only $71 after tax, rather than $670 or so, and it was fixed before we were done browsing the mall. Thank you Apple Store and Genius Chick!

Blue-C Sushi was quite good, and Zoey chowed down on salmon sushi after separating the fish from the rice and having me scrape off the invisible wasabi. We’re just coming off a Week With No TV for Zo, after she drew on the couch with crayons. The week was harder on me than it was on her, and she discovered Cranium Hullabaloo (which I was working on when Rona and I got married) and spent a lot of time playing it. On Saturday she woke up asking to watch TV, but played some Hullabaloo for a while once she got downstairs instead of asking for a show. We had Tivo record some classic holiday shows, like Frosty the Snowman, Frosty Returns, Jack Frost, and The Year Without Santa Claus, and Zoey watched those today. I loves me some Heat Miser!

"Is it a Borg?"

"They haven’t found out yet."

Links:

• The Spiel, Episode 34
• Walk the Plank Card Game

A book on which I was one of the editors, WFRP Companion (produced by Green Ronin and published by Black Industries) has been nominated for Best Supplement in this year’s ENnie Awards (and it received an Honorable Mention for Best Rules). In all, Green Ronin received fourteen nominations and three honorable mentions spread between seven different products we produced or published. Oh—that includes a nomination for Fan’s Choice Best Publisher, which we’ve managed to win the past three years in a row. We’re up against some terrific books (and in some cases books we’ve published are up against books we created and Black Industries published), and no matter how it all turns out, it’s quite an honor to be nominated.

Voting is now open to the public (that’s you!).

The card game that Brian and I co-wrote, Walk the Plank, should be hitting store shelves this upcoming week! I’ve put up a Walk the Plank art preview on GreenRonin.com, which shows artist Ramsey Hong’s sketches as they went through the approvals process, and then the final images. The game should be available at hobby game stores, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (and I think that also means Waldenbooks & Borders), Walmart, and elsewhere on the Web and on the streets. And you’ll of course be able to purchase Walk the Plank directly from Green Ronin Publishing, if you feel like it.

Yesterday Zoey tried on a new swimsuit from Aunt Bev for the first time. She loves it (it’s pink with white polka dots, so what’s not to love?) and had a bunch of fun playing in her swimming pool (a banker’s box) and in the front yard.

In car news, yesterday Steve across the street loaned me a battery terminal cleaning tool after I talked with him about Rona’s car. I cleaned the battery terminals and the wire clamp thingies. Twice, since the car still wouldn’t start after the first cleaning. The second time was the charm (probably because I wiped the terminals off with a paper towel after brushing them again), and the car started right up. Upon testing the car yesterday with Steve (pre-cleaning) it started up fine, but Steve pointed out that the car was warm from the sun. This morning, cold but with shiny battery terminals, the car started up no problem. I was outside the same time as Steve today, and he expressed concern that I hadn’t let the car run for a while after getting it to start again. He had me park the car across the street by his house, and ran out some superlong charger cables. Their length will make the charge time slow, and it should be good to go tomorrow morning. Rona felt compelled to snag photographic evidence of me working on the car:

Last night Nicole, Chris, and "Cake" stopped by, with some of NikChick’s delicious lasagna rolls and chicken enchiladas for us to freeze, another box of books for Zoey, and a preview copy of Walk the Plank that Nicole brought back from the GAMA Trade Show. Thanks, guys!

On her site, Nicole pointed out that if Keegan is born tomorrow, his birth date will be 05-06-07, which we agree would be pretty cool! Let’s shoot for that, okay, Baby Keegan?

I could grab a different copy of Windows off my shelf and install it in a different virtual machine, and then not upgrade to IE7. A trickier option I’m trying to get to work is this: You can download MS Virtual PC for free, as well as a timebombed disk image which includes Windows XP Pro SP2 with IE6 installed. This virtual hard drive will expire in August. In theory I’ll be able to download another virtual hard disk at that time. Anyway, so far I haven’t been able to get Windows in Virtual PC to run in Windows in VMware Fusion. We’ll see if I can get it working before Keegan arrives.

What we’ve done after 10 or so years, is convert our Rubicon Games-era card game, Up the Creek, into a pirate-themed version (otherwise exactly the same as our never-published original version) called Walk the Plank. Look for it in stores this May. Arrrr!

Odds are the MacBook Pro is even faster now, but it’s hard to tell. More memory is always better, though, especially if you open a lot of programs at once, like both Rona and I tend to do.

The AppleCare ordeal isn’t quite resolved yet, however. We still need to get the refund of the year remaining on the Powerbook’s warranty, make sure they didn’t subtract the cost of all the repairs they did on the lemon, fight them about that if necessary, and then get the extended warranty on the MacBook Pro. Stay tuned…

I was in the process of setting up Mac OS X Tiger, which you have to do in order to log in and check that everything’s present and working, when I noticed that this computer didn’t have a nice glossy screen like I had requested and received on the broken replacement laptop. I turned it around on the Genius Bar so Genius Jeff could take a look, and he agreed that this was a matte screen. His first instinct was to point out the place on the paperwork I had signed, where it stated that the replacement might not match the exact configuration of the computer being replaced.

I exuded disappointment.

Genius Jeff had clearly read up on my epic struggle to get my wrongs righted. He made the proper customer service decision, committed his boss and his store to it, and said, "I’ll go see if we have one with a glossy screen in the back room." He returned with one with the proper configuration, his manager cheerfully voiced her approval, all the Apple Store employees who were privy to my situation voiced their apologies and their wish for me to leave there happy.

I did.