The power adapter for my aging PowerBook literally melted this week.  Apparently at some point I'd put too much tension on the cord, causing the wire to separate inside the plastic housing.  The effect was that the current must have been literally arcing inside the cable housing to get from one portion of the power cable to the next, until it generated so much heat that the plastic puckered and peeled away from the wire.

I'm in the middle of a massive amount of data analysis for a research project, and have some tight deadlines ahead, made tighter by the fact that I'm moving and getting married in the next month.  So having no power for my laptop, even for a few days, wasn't an option—I needed a quick replacement.  Unfortunately, my computer is a few years old, and no one stocks the particular adapter it needs anymore.  The plug shape on Macs is proprietary, so you can't buy a universal adapter to do the job.  AppleCare, to their eternal credit, is sending a replacement part but it won't arrive for days.  And the one friend I have who has an equally old Mac, who might be able to loan me an adapter (or at least let me charge my computer periodically) is out of town.

So, I did what thousands of people do every day when things look dire.  I turned to Craigslist.  I posted a message to the Apple forum, briefly explaining my situation.  And within a few hours, someone in a town an hour away responded, saying he had an old adapter for a computer he no longer owned.  Long story short, not only did he give me the thing, free of charge, he offered to drive and meet me halfway between our locales, so I wouldn't have to travel for two hours to get the part and return.  And, by the way, he kept flexible work hours, so we could do this any time I liked.

Needless to say, I gratefully took him up on his offer.  We met in a public parking lot the following morning.  I almost felt guilty.  Not only was the man giving me the adapter for free, he had gotten up and driven an hour round trip to hand it to me, while gas cost $4.20 a gallon.  So I offered to pay for his trip.  But he wouldn't have it.  He said he was happy to do me a favor, glad that he'd found a good home for a part he otherwise would simply have chucked, and that it was "all about paying it forward."

Because of this guy, I'm not a week behind on all my work, three weeks before my wedding.  And this is why I love the Internet.  Despite all the flaming, the malware, and all the useless fluff eating up bandwidth every day, the Web also gives you access to a lot of really amazing prosocial people, who'll help you solve your über-specific problems.  During the time I lived in Philadelphia, I developed a deep and abiding respect for the Quakers' notion and ethos—the assumption that all people are, deep down, basically good and well-meaning.  I don't know about all people.  We live in a caveat emptor kind of world.  But I do know that a lot of people are genuinely kind.  And as much as we watch our backs from day to day, the world is a better place when we open ourselves to the better possibilities in human nature.

Tags: craigslist | mac | random thoughts | replacement parts

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