The Gulf Islands were lovely, just lovely. And I have photos! Postcards! Tales of hitchhiking, prawn delivery, epic seasickness, and more! None of which you’ll get to see or read for a long, long time, because my computer is dead.”"Dead?” I said to the guy at Future Shop, in the way that one asks questions when coming to terms with that chasm between one’s formerly-held beliefs and reality. “I thought it was just the adapter. When I left for my vacation, it was working ok, but the battery was discharging even though it was plugged in. Mind you, when I came back, it sputtered for a bit and then just shut off.”"”Adapter’s fine,” said the technician. “It’s giving me nineteen and a half volts. And your computer won’t even turn on.”"”The hell? It’s only a few months old. And -”"”We’ve had a lot of power surges on the Island in the last few weeks,” the technician recited. “And brownouts. It’s the brownouts that’ll really fry