Here we go, folks-- it's time for another new AtAT episode! Yeah! Woooo! So buckle up and get ready for your daily dose of sarcasm, melodrama, and overdone references to Reality Distortion Fields! Also, some childish insults and tired jabs at Steve Ballmer. Plus decent spelling and made-up words galore. And as always, some sort of... satire kinda thing. About...

...Um...

Okay, well, we'll level with you: tomorrow's Thanksgiving and the start of a four-day weekend, so mentally speaking, we've already totally checked out. Yeah. So maybe we should just bail on the usual format and go around the table, and we can all say what we're thankful for. Ready? We'll start: we're thankful for Exposé, Trader Joe's frozen burritos, TiVo, AirPort, TiVo with AirPort, our USB Christmas tree, Elmo's World, and brown paper packages tied up with string. There are probably others, too, like not being hospitalized with flesh-eating bacteria, but those cover the big ones.

Okay, your turn. Go.

...Hello?...

Oh, right-- this is sort of a one-way deal, here. Nurtz. Hmmm, well, okay, we'll forget the going-around-the-table idea and settle for hearing from faithful viewer Brian Warren, who sent in his thanks list ahead of time. (We suppose we're also thankful for faithful viewers who send in filler that lets us coast through a pre-holiday episode-- it probably ranks up there somewhere between TiVo and the we-don't-have-bacteria thing.) Brian is thankful for Mac OS X's "password hint" feature and his own sparkling ingenuity, without both of which he'd still be out a 17-inch PowerBook right now.

Get this: while traveling in Vancouver last month (that's in Canada, eh), Brian fell victim to thievery most foul. The culprit made off with his wallet, his camera, and-- most upsettingly of all-- his PowerBook. Oh, and his iPod, which, ironically enough, contained a backup of the important data on his PowerBook. Brian filed a report with the Vancouver police, knowing full well that only about 3% of stolen computers ever get returned to their owners, and flew home, PowerBookless and dejected.

Oh, stop bawling. It gets better. See, it turns out that the guy who wound up with the loot was a meth-head, and a crappy driver to boot. So when the cops pulled him over and spotted a suspiciously expensive 17-inch PowerBook in the back seat, said meth-head told them that "somebody" had sold it to him for a hundred bucks. Naturally, Vancouver's finest confiscated the 'Book (and the iPod along with it) and started poking around on it to find some information. What they found was the Mac OS X login screen-- and after three random incorrect guesses at a password (we expect they tried "canucksrule," "lornemichaels," and "degrassi"), the login window showed Brian's password hint-- which was "$$ for return of computer. Call 907.766.2970."

And so, a week after his ordeal north of the border, Brian received a phone call from Greg down at the Vancouver police station, and today he has his mammoth aluminum baby back safe in his arms. (His iPod, too, which the none-too-tech-savvy police had described as "something that looks like a mouse but isn't a mouse.") As it turns out, the police had totally lost Brian's theft report; there was no record of it anywhere. So if he hadn't thought to include that little note as his password hint, he'd still be mourning the loss of his Mac even as some Canadian cops continued to guess random passwords before giving up and using it as a snazzy clipboard. All's well that ends well, especially since Brian didn't just get his PowerBook back-- he got it back with new music added to iTunes, free porn in his iPhoto library, and even a bunch of custom icons Mr. Meth had set before he shut down the system and effectively locked himself out. What more could you possibly ask for?

(Snif) Kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?