Susan Jacobson

I spent the day in a computer lab because my laptop is still on the disabled list. I was in the Faculty Lab for most of the day, but now, as I am wrapping things up, I am stuck in the giant Tech Center, where the students are actively yakiing while computing. Two Japanese guys are practicing weird English phrases over and over again - "masochist," "have a good one," - in-between their rapid-fire native language exchanges, frequently punctuated by references to "gaijin." I want to slap them. We all know what "gaijin" means.

I know most of you have seen this photo, but I shared it with Peter Hanley, one of the tech staff in the faculty lab. He has a dog, and we were talking about the differences between dogs and cats. "Look," I said, "my kitty gave me half his mouse!" "That's so cool," he said. "That's definitely a cat thing. My dog would never give me half his mouse. He'd eat it all himself."

In other news, I was right to be apprehensive when my laptop walked off with the tall, French-speaking stranger. Apparently he did not know how to *take the hard drive out properly*, and now another uber-tech is trying to revive it back to a state where it can be shipped back to Apple. Sigh.