Our Short, Localized Nightmare Is Over

Meet TACKAY: The Apple Currently Known As Yolanda. Why Yolanda? Why not Yolanda? It's just a placeholder until I get to know my electronic problem child a little better.

And a problem child, she's been, to the point where anthropomorphizing is absolutely appropriate.

I should have had a clue when I found her in the "refurbished MacBook" section of the Apple site. (Yeah, I got a plain old MacBook. I would have loved to splurge on a MacBook Pro, but given my current circumstances, it seemed wiser to leave the extra room on my Visa Of Last Resort.) All of my laptops have been refurbished rescues, and Yolanda's predecessors have been so grateful to have a new, permanent home that they were little cooperative angels right off the bat.

Not this one.

Perhaps I should be proud that my new bag o' chips managed to come up with a problem that -- judging from Google, Apple tech support and a bevy of Apple Geniuses -- no other MacBook has ever had. (Post-data migration, the built-in keyboard and trackpad weren't recognized, though an external mouse was. No, it doesn't make sense.)

After a series of daily visits to the Apple Store, and lots of experimentation, we're finally set. I think.

So, please feel free to resume normal communication methods. Now, back to whatever I was, or wasn't, doing before all this happened. Um... yay?