Of course, it's still March, so I shouldn't be surprised when something else goes wrong. This is actually a continuation of something that happened earlier this month, that I never got around to ranting about here. The short version is I gave my PowerBook a soda bath a week or two before Kevin did the same to his PowerBook. But while his came out mostly unscathed, mine wouldn't boot.
So I took it to the Bay Street Apple Store, and they sent it in for repair, and they called me and told me it was going to cost something like $1000 for parts and labor. What could I do, say no? As it happened, it was they very next day that I went snowboarding and cut my eyebrow and got stitches.
While I was at it, I also took my dead airport base station and dead-battery iPod to the apple store, but they were both more than a year old and hence out of warranty, so I got no repair love there, either.
Anyway, I finally picked up my PowerBook today -- I called them last week and asked "What the fuck?" They said they called on the 12th, but they didn't leave a message... I picked it up, and found out they had replaced the whole motherboard/logicboard, the RAM, and the keyboard. I was particularly happy to hear the keyboard had been replaced, because that meant I wouldn't have to deal with any stickiness issues that plagued my Pismo for long after I gave it a soda bath.
So I got it home and turned it on and was very unhappy to discover that the q key didn't work. Also, the mouse button isn't as clicky as it used to be, and when I'm trying to hold it down, for example, it'll sometimes "let go" even though I'm still pressing on it.
In other words, I'll be heading back to the Apple Store tomorrow. The Proof of Repair says "If your product needs service due to defects in materials or workmanship within 90 days of this repair, AppleCare Service will repair your system free of charge," which means the keyboard should be free (except in the time-is-money sense). I'll see if they'll fix the button for free while they're at it, because I can't afford to pay for anything else, and if they won't fix it, well, it still works, and I could probably adapt to using tap-click on the trackpad.
So yes, I still hate March. This one did nothing to change things.