Dram: Power Failure

What you see here is the poor, mistreated end of my Mac's Mag-Safe power adapter. After many months of hard, every day use it had gotten pretty frayed and the tape -- part of a Band-Aid actually -- that I wrapped around it was no longer holding it together very well. The result was that I was getting intermittent charging of my Mac and the propects were looking worse going forward. I don't exactly know why this has happened, but I suspect it is because the rubber wrapping has shruk over time and pulled out of the connector sleeve. Anyway, the funny thing is this: I asked my friend Greg to pick up a new power adapter and bring it over with him, but none of the Mac stores in Seattle have any in stock. In fact, the online Apple store shows a 4-6 week shipping delay. Perhaps I'm not the only one who has had this problem. Anyway, I happened to stumble on an Apple dealer here in Amsterdam and looked for one there. None were available on the shelf, but a clerk checked the records and discovered that one -- only one -- was listed in their shipment that arrived that day. While I looked on, he dug around in a huge box of newly arrived Apple stuff and came up with it! So, I have done my first Mac gear replacement on The Voyage!