I was thinking of naming this post "How To Slowly Destroy Your Grasp On Reality," but I thought it'd be a bit melodramatic.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not a stranger to taking apart laptops, especially of the Apple variety; I can take a hard drive out of an iBook G4 (which has about 150 steps just to remove the case to get to the innards) with little problem. And, given how easy it is to install a hard drive in a normal MacBook (1. Take out battery, 2. Remove metal plate that is held by three screws, 3. Take out the hard drive using convenient plastic tab, 4. Take old hard drive out of tray, and put new one in, 5. Reverse steps, 6. Done), I thought maybe, maybe, this would be not so bad.

Yeah. Not so much.

It's not that it's difficult to do, mind you... the entire job takes removing about 25 screws from start to finish, compared to the 8000 screws that the iBook seems to present you with. And removing the drive isn't so bad, save for the annoying glue that holds the infrared port for the Apple Remote in place on top of the drive. What is a pain, and what drove me absolutely nuts, was the top casing.

See, you gotta pry around the edges of the MacBook Pro to lift the thing out, which isn't really all that difficult of a task until you get to the front of the computer, which seems to be held down by either duct tape or God. Rocking the piece back and forth was the recommended way pry it loose according to iFixIt.com, but all that resulted in was some bending of the top, which wasn't major enough to bother anyone but me.

So, if you're thinking your gonna want to upgrade the hard drive in your MacBook Pro, you might wanna look at having Apple do it as a custom order at their store, since it's a bit of a headache. Speaking of headaches, I'm suffering through a pretty intense one at the moment, so it's nap time.

Well, there used to be a video of Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Dan Clowes on The Simpsons, but it got taken down.

Best laid plans and all that.

Gotta admit, I quite enjoyed this 'live blogging' thing, made much easier by CoverItLive.com. If you want to do one of these things, I whole-heartedly recommend them (although the lack of a spell checker is a bit of a downer, but not an insurmountable one).

Jump after the break to read the replay of the insanity that is my Oscar live blog.

Read On!

As I am wont to do, here are my picks for the Academy Awards tonight, which I will be live-blogging (for at least a half hour, or until I pass out from boredom). Titles with an asterisk next to them indicate movies I've seen, which wasn't many of 'em. As the night goes on, I'll cross out which picks were wrong and italicize the ones I got right, showing just how inaccurate my random guessing can be.

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Louis, There Will Be Blood
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

BEST ACTRESS: Ellen Page, Juno
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Saoirse Ronan, Atonement

BEST PICTURE: No Country For Old Men
BEST ANIMATED FILM: Persepolis

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED): Peter And The Wolf
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION): At Night

ART DIRECTION: Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street*
CINEMATOGRAPHY: No Country For Old Men
COSTUME DESIGN: Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street*
DIRECTION: No Country For Old Men
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Sicko
DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Freeheld
FILM EDITING: No Country For Old Men
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: 12
MAKEUP: Norbit
MUSIC (SCORE): Ratatouille*
MUSIC (SONG): Choose one from Enchanted
SOUND EDITING: There Will Be Blood
SOUND MIXING: Transformers*
VISUAL EFFECTS: Transformers*
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY): No Country For Old Men
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY): Juno

As spring approaches, a young eD!'s thoughts turn to several things; happiness, love, and the comic convention season. And, no, that's not the order he thinks of them in.

One of the first major conventions of the year is the New York Comic-Con, which I have been going to since its creation waaaaaay back in 2006. And despite the fact that the convention has been very hit or miss for me (with the first year being a disaster and the second being fun enough, aided by the fact that they were using the main hall for the show instead of the basement), I still go to it, hoping that Reed Exhibitions, the folks behind the show, learned from the mistakes of last year.

Anyway, NYCC announced today their guest of honor, and, I gotta say, I'm insanely stoked. In comics, there are very few writers I would go out of my way to meet, and most of that list has been completed successfully. However, there is one writer who has eluded me to this day, and, finally, I might be able to get him to sign something: Grant Morrison.

Yet another awesome Valentine's Day Gift to me. Thanks, universe!

The Dark Knight. Iron Man. A new Harry Potter. Speed Racer. Hellboy II. There seems to be something I'm missing...

...oh, that's right. Indiana-freakin'-Jones, who's teaser trailer premiered on Good Morning America today. Happy Valentine's Day to me, fo' sho'.

With the writer's strike, why didn't anyone try to resurrect Who's Line Is It Anyway?

Woulda been a lot better than Survivor: Hoboken.

I got really, really tired of the whole rounded corners thing. Hopefully this layout will be as much to your liking as it is to mine.

Just watch it. You can thank me later.