Mauled...

I had to go to the mall yesterday. A professor at the college I worked at had a powerbook with a keyboard that wouldn't always show key presses, and was of course 14 days outside of warrenty. So after consultation with a few coworkers, I was off to the Apple Store after work to drop it off.

I've never been a mall person. My dad has always hated malls (his question - why would I want to go somewhere that sounds like maul?). In the past, I've tended to be ambivilent, but of late I've started to dislike the mall more and more.

Part of this is the deal hunter in me - it is rare that you find a good deal in a mall store. Mall stores are small, because space is expensive, so there is less chance that an item will sit around until it's marked down to a crazy low price, and mall store owners are less likely to take the risk of buying merchandise that may not sell. I find great deals at brick-and-morter mass merchandisers and catagory killers, and online, but almost never at a store in a mall.

And I, in general, dislike people, and the mall is always full of people - fat pushy women reminding me that I really could stand to lose a few pounds, annoyingly helpful store clerks when all I want to do is look around, and happy couples reminding me what a single loser I am.

There is one thing I do like about the mall - a Japanese Tepenyaki resturant that bsom got me hooked on. Of course, it was closed for renovation or replacement - I can't remember the name of the old place, and I'm pretty sure it was different than what was on the "coming soon" sign.

And to frustrate things more, my visit to the Apple store consisted of the guy reseting Open Firmware and saying it was fixed - and of course it worked then. Which means one of two outcomes, neither pleasant - I either totally misdiagnosed the issue and thus am a total nob job, or it actually is an issue with the keyboard and just happened to work at the time, which means I'll have an unhappy user with a computer that will be returned and stop working again... and I'll have to make another trip to the maul... I mean, mall.