My Old, Dead Mac, and What It Meant to Me When It was Alive and a Request....

So, a few weeks ago, my MacBook died.  A few months before that, it started to crash at seemingly random moments.  After it went from one or two crashes a week to one or two crashes a day I was able to work out that the hard drive was in constant need of repairs (despite me having replaced it in November) and that almost every time I'd tax the processor the laptop would crash.  Before too long even browsers would tax the processor--one time I caused a crash by scrolling through a blog in Chrome.

And by "crash" I mean that the power cuts out--not a fun thing to deal with when you're intensely focused on a project you are in the middle of.

So, what does it mean to me now that it's dead?  Well, not only does it mean no more puppet videos, but it also means my videography work is done.  If that wasn't enough, the various publishing projects I've been developing will be seriously delayed or dumped entirely (I had planned to self-publish a 6 novel series I wrote--the 1st one's here, a Ballpoint Adventures compilation, and a magazine-version of my website via MagCloud.com). 

On top of that, it means I'm using my netbook for everything--it's not meant for that.  It's supposed to be a portable typewriter that allows me to do light surfing and emailing, but now I'm making it do blogging and mulitmedia stuff--no HD editing, obviously, and even the multimedia stuff doesn't happen too often.  My eee 4g is too slow to run any recent version of Photoshop (and the screen is 7 inches, so what's the point?) and the sound drivers often don't load propery so most of the time I can't even watch a choppily played YouTube video.

I don't mean to make this sound like a "Woe as me" kind of thing.  I just want to make it clear to folks that have helped or are considering helping me raise money for a new MacBook Pro, that all of this work and almost all of my future plans are at a standstill thanks to that 3 year-old computer dying.

FYI, my Macintosh PowerBook ran just fine until this spring--that means it was nearly 6 years-old (I got it in June 2004) when it died.

So, if you can help me raise the $1200+tax to get a new MacBook Pro, I'd greatly appreciate it.  This isn't me begging, or me demanding, or me trying to take advantage.  This is me just asking for a hand.  So far, friends and family have contributed just short of half the money.  These are folks who like what I do on the web, enjoy my comics, laugh at my work with Jay ThePal and Kay ThePal, or just otherwise want to help.

So, if you don't want to help, by all means, don't.  If you want to see that my various works continue and have a few bucks to spare, I'd appreciate it if you could toss 'em my way. 

To help, check out the page my lovely wife put up (http://sierrarein.com/a/petesake) or just send something via Paypal to thepetecom*AT*gmail.com (replace the *AT* with a "@").

Thanks!!

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