The Den of Slack

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Mac woe, followed by Mac wow

It’s easy to bitch about bad customer service experiences and even easier to forget to praise the good ones, so I thought I’d share my recent Apple Store experience. Spoiler: it has a happy ending.

A while back, my MacBook developed a crack in the plastic casing to the right of the track pad. I hadn’t dropped it or manhandled it in any obvious way, so I figured it was a fluke and fixed it with super glue. Several months later, the glue stopped sticking and part of the plastic broke off, leaving a little gap that you could actually see into the computer through. I wasn’t happy about it, but it didn’t occur to me to look into it. The laptop (which turns four years old this week) was well out of warranty and other than looking bad, it wasn’t really an issue.


Crack #1, to the right of the track pad. Gluing the cracked plastic worked for a few months.
Then part of it broke off, leaving a hole.

The Friday before last, I noticed a similar crack developing above the screen, in the upper left corner (not the same side as the first crack). Since I’m relatively careful with my laptop, I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Suspicious, I Googled “MacBook crack” and soon learned that this is a common problem with the 13″ MacBooks of this vintage. I saw pictures of cracks that looked exactly like mine.


Crack #2 developing in the upper left corner.

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Rosedale porch door (and more)

With the front door finished, I moved on to the porch door. This one is a Houseworks door and it’s a totally different style than the other door and the windows.

I’d already cut the pediment off the top, which left the door frame looking kind of plain, especially compared to the fancy front door. To dress it up a bit, I decided to add the bottom porch stoop piece from Kit B as a cap at the top, and the bottom trim pieces from Kit B. (Added bonus: adding trim to the top of the door hides the fact that the hole wasn’t quite square at the top!)

I also popped out two little square pieces that are supposed to go on top of the newel posts to use as trim at the top of the door. But partway through painting all the pieces, I got the idea to cut off the bottoms of Kit B’s front door corner trim instead.

Here are all the pieces painted. The stripes aren’t perfect—especially the one furthest to the right, which I painted first. I tried to get purple paint into the crack between the stripes and it didn’t work out too well, so I was careful not to repeat that mistake for the other stripes. After a few rounds of touch-ups I decided that no amount of repainting was going to make it better and I can live with it. (This is a rare case where it looks worse in the pictures than in person. I hope so anyway!)

The two doors complement each other nicely. You wouldn’t necessarily know that one came with the kit and the other didn’t.

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Springtime is for (tomato) lovers

After last year’s depressing tomato experience, I promised myself I wouldn’t jump the gun this year. But after a week of gorgeous 70-80 degree days at the end of March, the tomato bug bit me. (As did the pepper bug. But not as hard.) I sure hope they survive the spring, because I went a little nuts…


Left to right: Anaheim, Inferno, and Sweet Banana peppers; San Francisco Fog, Early Girl, and Garden Peach tomatoes; Juliet (grape) tomatoes, Lemon Drop tomatoes, and Red Cherry peppers; Juliet (again), Sunsugar, and Sweet Pea Currant tomatoes.

I’m positive I’m trying to put too many plants in each of these pots. But I love the idea of having so many different types of tomatoes. With the exception of the Early Girls, which I grew last year (not very well) and the Juliet grapes, which I think are what I grew the year before that were SO GOOD, all of these are new to me. In theory they’re a mix of medium sized tomatoes and cherries. As for the peppers, I did grow a red cherry variety last year, but the others are new. I’m still planning to plant one more pot—Habaneros and Caribbean Hot peppers, both favorites from last year—but I haven’t been able to find them yet. Maybe this weekend.

I’m also growing Swiss chard, and it’s doing much better than last year. Hopefully that’s a good omen for the tomatoes and peppers!

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