According to Rodents of the World, by David Alderton, “young capybaras are miniatures of their parents, able to follow their mother and graze grass almost as soon as they are born.” (p. 74) So I’m thinking it’d be fun to give someone an infant capybara and tell them “Here, I got you this guinea pig as a pet.”

Although the capybara weighs only three pounds at birth, they are the largest living species of rodent, and an adult weighs over 150 pounds. Imagine your victim’s surprise when their “guinea pig” grows and grows and grows, to over four feet in length!

My laptop is broken again. Yes, I dropped it. I guess technically, since I was ten feet away at the time, it fell. But I was the one who left it sitting so precariously, so I take full responsibility.

It landed on its “back”, and the AC adapter’s plug bore the brunt of the impact, which it kindly transferred to the laptop’s power socket, which is now only barely connected to the motherboard (that 12″ PowerBook, with the power socket on the side, is looking better every day). The laptop is mostly intact and works fine, except that it only intermittently charges. From experience, I know that trying to power it in this condition leads to Bad Things. Unfortunately, not powering it at all will make it rather difficult to use the computer for many more hours.

I’ll get out my screwdriver and open ‘er up to ascertain the damage, but I expect that the system board needs to be replaced. From experience, I know this will cost me $968, plus tax. At this point, I doubt it’s worth it. One option is to get an external battery charger and just forget about the built-in one, although that’s not cheap either. Also a little annoying, since you can no longer run the laptop off of AC power.

Eric’s PowerBook screen cracked recently, and someone offered to sell him cheaply an intact screen from a dead PowerBook of the same model. I don’t suppose anyone out there has an otherwise-dead Dell Inspiron 4000 with an undamaged system board they’d be willing to sell me?