Bhante Punnaji, my first teacher of Buddhism, was in town last week to give a series of dhamma talks at the Oregon Buddhist Vihara. I had planned to attend at least one if not all three, but fate intervened.
Upon learning that I’m a sysadmin by trade, Punnaji asked if I could take a look at his laptop, which was malfunctioning. Sure enough, the screen would come on, then go off, then come back on, then off, then back .. you get the idea.
As the laptop had a VGA output for an external monitor, I brought Bhante and said laptop to my home, hooked up a spare monitor, and everything worked splendidly. The problem was definitely with the internal screen. Looking at the screen from an angle I could make out an image being displayed, but not backlit. Bad inverter board. Backlighting is sporadic. Told Punnaji he would have to get a new inverter board, and that would have to wait until he was someplace long enough to wait for delivery to a repair shop and turnaround.
Meanwhile he had caught sight of woo’s 12″ G3 iBook. He was impressed with it, and certainly I was enthusiastic about getting him off Windows (for obvious reasons). He took the plunge, and now Bhante Punnaji is the proud owner of a 14″ G4 933Mhz iBook. He got it (lightly) used. It’s cosmetically perfect. He’s happy.
However, that meant that the last four days of last week were a whirlwind. Pick up iBook. Install OS and apps. Configure everything. Take that to the vihara and train him over the course of a few nights. Reformat the drive in the old laptop so his personal data isn’t on it. Et cetera, et cetera. Long, long days.
As an added “bonus,” Bhante picked up a new cell phone that was on the iSync-approved list from Apple. A Motorola v550 from Cingular. He wanted an easy way to get phone numbers into the phone, and “Address Book + iSync + Bluetooth = a great solution.” Trouble is, Motorola changed the device ID string when they fab’ed the phone for Cingular, and iSync now does not recognize the phone as valid. Grrrr. Motorola, send your changes downstream, please. This is causing consumer frustration.
But in all a fun week, though exhausting. A good kind of tired, however, as putting the tools to write and convey his wisdom into the hands of the man that is my Yoda is probably the best work I have done all year.
Wish I had heard the dhamma talks, though. Ah well, I think I have convinced him to spend the 2006 rains retreat in Portland. I’ll hope for that.