What a productive weekend, I have to say.  The Boyf
and I rented a palm sander and he went after the bookshelves we’re
trying to get done up to go into the library.  I rented a
lawnmower that involved an engine so I could (finally) catch up on the
mowing and, tah-dah, we got a crapload done around the house. 
Throw in some delicious chicken-and-vegetable fried rice by Pants
Wilder and we had a Sunday to remember.  Of course, Saturday was
spent grilling and doing crafty things at Kath’s & Bascha‘s house.  My “craft,” such as it was, involved writing a summary of a D&D game and posting those pictures of the trees hit by lightning, but hey.

The weather is so wretched I find it difficult to even talk
about.  I know my forebears endured this, and more, all without
the advent of air conditioning.  I also know that I am entirely
comfortable admitting that I am of weaker, diluted stock and that I do
not have it in me to live that sort of life.  I long to sit on a
throne of ice inside a walk-in refrigerator.  That would be pretty
rad right now.

So I have a laptop question for my fellow Apple geeks:  is the
switch to Intel chips next year a good reason not to buy an iBook this
autumn?  The iBooks finally got a refresh
to something more respectable in terms of base stats (256 MB is not
enough RAM to run any version of OS X, I don’t care what they say), and
the 14-inch model looks mighty attractive.  I wouldn’t be buying
it until November or December anyway, and at that point am I better off
(in terms of performance and/or in terms of software availability,
etc.) just waiting for the Intel models?  My current Windows
laptop has had a number of improvements made to it this year, such that
even though it’s years old and runs at 600 MHz it’s still a pretty
peppy little machine with a big-ass hard drive and everything I really
need it to do.  I would be fine continuing to use it, but I would
also be more than fine with having a new iBook as a Christmas &
NaNo present to myself.  However, I have zero understanding of
what the switch to Intel will really mean.  Will I be buying a
useless hunk of plastic?  Will I be buying a highly attractive
hunk of plastic that will be useless in six months? (more…)