Off By One

Take a look at this:

Sure looks horrible, eh?

At least it’s not a total loss; I can still back up my data and take it in for service. Looks like my $300 applecare just paid for itself…

I had a peculiarly disappointing day yesterday. Not the whole day, but a part of it really shook my faith in the ability of people to grow in a positive direction.

I took a bit of time to look up one of my old classmates, call him D for the sake of anonymity. D was one of the people that i attended school with from the beginning through to grad, and I remember always having a fair amount of respect for his native intelligence. We were never great friends, but he wasn’t one of my principal tormentors either.

Now, D has a pretty good life — he’s getting married, owns a business — which I was happy to see. However, he also believes that the world is young, it was made some excessively short time ago at the behest of a supernatural entity, carbon dating is a sham, evolution is wrong (note, not “Natural Selection is wrong” — I got told that natural selection works fine, evolution doesn’t) and, well, you get the idea.

I hate to lose respect for someone like that. But all of the residual respect that I once had is gone now, and I’m left with a feeling of profound disappointment.