Serious dark smoke starting coming out of the brick around lunchtime, and I unplugged the thing. Then I got on the phone again, talked to two more Apple store people. The one in Palo Alto said the Valley Fair store usually had a few ‘refreshed’ adapters around. Did that mean the same as ‘refurbished’, I wondered. They assured me these had been opened by customers but returned unused. Now why would they do that?

A call to Valley Fair: they had two refresheds this morning, but they were gone now. Time to try Fry’s.

A very helpful salesperson (either they’ve all been whipped, or the old staff was fired, or they’ve been completely retrained) spent a large part of his afternoon searching for something that would work on my G4 laptop. First he found an adapter with too little wattage, then one that seemed awfully powerful. Finally, there was the Goldilocks moment. He would leave it at will call. Thanks, Jay!

Tonight I dashed over. There was no adapter at will call. My heart sank at the idea of doing this all over again with a different clerk, because wouldn’t you know it, Jay was gone for the day.

A guy in a suit tried to help. I could remember part of the name of the manufacturer and the price. He took me to some shelves where the products looked familiar from Jay’s descriptions earlier. Nothing. Then I said the magic word: universal. Jay had mentioned that it would work in cars and airplanes. The suit headed for the laptop section and within seconds, it was in my hand.

My battery was at 0 when I got home. Now it’s up to 43% and life is looking okay again. Micro Innovations. $70. I still have an Apple adapter on back order, I’m thinking it’s a very good idea to have two.