This is why we can't have nice things

iBook is fucked again. The screen now thinks that the year is 2030 and it is a sheet of iPaper, working under reflective light only. I can just barely make out the stuff on the screen if I shine lots of light on it; otherwise it's dead black. An interesting effect

Apple's pared back their support to weekdays only, so I get to pound sand all weekend. What I'm really worried about is what they'll find when I finally manage to send it in to them. While I hvae no explicit memories of spilling drinks or anything on it this time, if they again said "Aha, we see evidence of $foo here, which your warranty doesn't cover," I can only believe them. And the repair costs would be, what, a fifth of all the money I have right now?

Feh. I need to know if I can look for a job or not. Hurry up, MIT.

PMFI

I have been in and around the realm of IT support long enough to appreciate the miracle of PMFI. Well, the Problem, in this case, didn't really Magically Fix Itself; after making the previous cathartic post, I performed some intuitive experimentation, and saw that, aha, putting the iBook to sleep and then opening it partway made the screen happy, but then quickly opening it up fully darkened it again. Sleepified it again, then tried opening it up slo-o-o-owly. That kept it happy, and that's where it is now. I haven't messed with it further, to determine whether this problem was a one-time fluke or something I'll have to continually deal with.

Well, whatever. I am a friend to all workarounds.