My Powerbook,
originally uploaded by thenerdsangle.

So, I know I’ve told a lot of people that I got a Powerbook over Thanksgiving Break, but I thought people might want to see a photo of it.

This is also an excuse for me to play with my new Flickr account.

So…this story is going to take lots of setup, and to those that don’t know Chinese, it will be more or less incomprehensible. I’ll try to translate, but the punchline has no English equivalent. On the plus side, I think it has a good ending.

As part of our partnership-thing with the Vanderbilt Chinese Program, Mrs. Whittaker and the Chinese teachers at Vandy arranged China Night, where groups of students (or in the case of the high schoolers, whole classes) presented skits.

The best moment in the whole night was during one dialogue between a black guy (henceforth known as B) and an Asian jock type (A) who was holding a basketball. At some point (I couldn’t understand all of it), the following exchange was heard:

A: 我喜欢打球。 (I like to play ball)
B: 我也喜欢打球。 (I also like to play ball)
A: 我们打球吧。 (Let’s play ball)

So the Asian starts dribbling and “shoots.” The black guy smacks the ball down and in the process, knocks the Asian guy over and says…

B: 怎么样，fo’!

Also, as I was walking back to my car, there’s some sort of financial firm across the street with an LED display that shows current stock prices. Unfortunately, when we looked at it, everything read 0.00.

So either their internet connection is down, or the stock market just fell through the floor. Hopefully it’s the former.

So after I’ve managed to break, rebuild, break again, and once more rebuild the blog (eventually it will settle – I promise!), I think it’s time to put this story up for the amusement of others.

I got drawn into an impromtu meeting with Ms. White, Ms. Edwards, Ms. Howell, and Al Cocke concerning the School Board’s spontaneous decision to cut off MLK’s 7th and 8th grades (this, in and of itself, will get a post of its own).

Near the end, Ms. Howell had left and returned with Avram and a set (Do they come in sets? Or is it like a pair?) of jumper cables, asking if I could jump Avram’s car.

So I get into my car and drive over to his, parking pointed in the wrong direction so our hoods are facing each other.

Then I realize that I don’t actually know how to open the hood.

I take out the manual and look it up. Meanwhile, Avram thinks it’s hilarious that I don’t know how to open the hood on my car.

Of course, he couldn’t get his open either.

To make things more enjoyable, it was cold. Not as cold as it’s been on other days, but low 40s, I’d say. And, of course, we’re standing outside MLK, so I’m worried the whole time that someone’s going to come and mug us.

Once we get our hoods open, we both find the section in our manuals on jumping a car so we can find the batteries. The battery in my car is apparently under trunk, but luckily there are contacts up front.

Now, I’m not completely innocent to this sort of thing. Mom has a tendency to leave her lights on, so I’ve seen car jumpings, and I understand that the process is pretty straightforward.

But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make our batteries explode.

Just to be sure, I’m looking at my diagram, I’m looking at his diagram, and I’m just about to start trying to hook things up when Ms. Melder walks up and asks if we need help. Turns out, though, that she apparently didn’t really know what she was doing either.

After tearing apart the cables on my end because the positive terminal and the ground were on opposite sides of the hood, we had three ends connected, and right as a black guy drives past, we touch the forth to the…I guess it was negative?…terminal of Avram’s battery, and the sparks start flying.

“Looks like you got ‘em reversed”

So we switch the connectors, hook everything up, and nothing sparks, so I turn on my car. It took some extra gassing on my end, but Avram’s eventually turned on too.

And that’s it.

Now for homework, children, see if you can figure out why the hell I can’t tell a story with a good ending. Keep in mind the important distinction between good endings and happy endings.