;)
The wind here in Point Hope has shifted to the west and south and is forecast to stay that way for four days. This brings the pack ice back, closes the lead, and pretty much brings the bowhead hunt to a pause until the wind shifts back to the Northeast.
As I am scheduled to leave here for Barrow Thursday, this means that I am probably done taking pictures at Point Hope whale camp for this year. It also meant that I found myself with a little time to do some blogging and so I decided that I would tough out this malfunctioning laptop computer screen and would put up a full blown post.
But when I tried, I just could not beat the screen. I could not edit the pictures. I simply could not tell enough about what I was looking at, so I gave up and just grabbed this one sunset-through-overcast-and-light-fog picture, which I took two nights ago, right about midnight, Alaska Daylight Savings Time.
Maybe after I get to Barrow, if I find the time, I can borrow a computer and do some serious editing. If not, then, except for "keeping this blog alive" single pic entries such as this, it will just have to wait until I get back to Wasilla in about one week.
Obviously, I need to do something about this screen. I had earlier taken it in to my local Mac store for an estimate and that came out to a bit over $500. I called Mac itself, and they said the odds were good that they would be able to replace it for their standard fee of $300 - which is also their minimum fee - but they could not say for certain until they checked it out.
It seemed to me that it would be better to put the $300 - $500 towards an iPad, which I could then use both as an iPad and as a screen for this laptop, rather than into this old laptop itself, but the full price of the iPad has eluded me so far - although I suspect that I have squandered more than enough money on breakfast, hamburgers, tacos and such since this malfunction began to have covered the full price and then some.
But I've got to do something. This is absurd. It really cripples me in the field.
Right now, this laptop is good for little other than serving as a data transfer and storage device.