argh
My laptop's power input is broken. Not too badly yet since it seems to still get power in more positions than not, but I've been here before and I know it can go nstily downhill from here.
I think I know how I broke it, it's a dimly remembered farce from the morning before last that involved getting up to let the cat out, tripping over the laptop cord, putting the laptop back up only to trip over it again on the return trip.
There's a good chance it's the coord and if so I could just spend another $50 for third power brick and problem solved. My memory sucks and I forgot why I had to buy the second power brick, but I have a blog, so I know that it was a short in the cord before.
Now, I've been thinking about getting another laptop anyway, but it would just be a cheap used laptop off of ebay to use for d-i testing and development. The IBM thinkpads are nice, but just don't grip me and somehow this pokey laptop with its not very good outdoors screen still makes me happy, and I'd hate for this to be the bit that killed it.
I think I'll invest in a multimeter first so I can find out what the problem is.