The part the repair shop needed finally arrived today. When I called, the guy said he was fixing my computer right then and it would be ready for pickup first thing tomorrow.
Unfortunately, with gas at $4 a gallon, I don’t think I can justify making the trip to Fort Wayne just to pick up the computer. That would be two trips in one day, because I have an afternoon class at Ohio State, and then I’m planning to go to Fort Wayne after that to spend the weekend with Michael. By the time I get there, the shop will be closed. So I will have to pick up the computer on Friday. I figure I’ll survive until then.
Mom’s lent me her laptop for a bit — it’s better than Dad’s, though hardly ideal.
Right now I’m keeping myself busy with school and reading. I’m reading Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, which is about the Louisiana State Penitentiary. It’s written by two convicted murderers who spent decades behind bars there.
The Charley Project Blog 
I really hope you get your laptop back soon. I imagine you will be blissfully in the zone, updating the backlog from the last couple of weeks at some point when you are not dong your schoolwork.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola had quite a reputation back in the day. Before more enlightened minds decided that working 14 and 16 hour days cutting sugarcane was cruel and unusual punishment and forced the Prison to end that practice, there were not too many problems with the inmates because they were too tired to cause problems. Once they were no longer being worked hard, Angola became one of the most violent and bloody prisons in the country.
I wish we could work prison inmates that hard here in the United States because then prison wouldn’t be a place where to could form gangs and cause trouble. I definitely think that many people with criminal leanings would make a point to avoid that kind of life if they knew that prison ment being worked damn near to death for years IMHO.
It says that at one point, about 75 inmates deliberately cut their Achilles tendons (crippling them for life) to protest the conditions at the prison. That was actually the event that caused things to start to turn around there.
I agree with Justin. They still work in most prisons but nowhere near that hard, they’re sure not too tired to make trouble.