I’m working on the PowerBook for the duration of the repairs, and the studio is eerily quiet without Hrothgar’s constant hum.

I drove the PowerMac to the repair shop this morning, a place in every way the opposite of the Apple Store, dark and cavernous, overflowing with an uncountable number of Macs. Instead of a homogeneous display of the latest-and-greatest, practically everything Apple ever constructed, ranging back a decade, was represented. I love going to the Apple Store; it never fails to instill in me a longing for what the future holds. Yet today I left my machine in a place that seems to recognize and honor the past as well.

As much as I like the machine, I resent the amount of time I’ve spent tending it as I wistfully think of other applications of that time. When does the maintenance of a tool outweigh its usefulness?