Ask and ye shall receive. After getting all hot and bothered over the prospect of becoming bona fide Apple-certified technicians via the new $299 AppleCare Technician Training, our hopes and dreams crumbled to dust upon being informed that we still wouldn't be able to order service parts or perform warranty repairs without being employed by an Authorized Service Provider. Fine, then... we wondered aloud, "how does one get one's house sanctified as an Authorized Service Provider?" And once again, it's The Mac Show's Shawn King with the answer. (You can repay his attention to detail by tuning in to his show Wednesday night at 9PM EST.)

So, without further ado, let's take a look at Apple's requirements for locations wishing to become Authorized Service Providers. First on the list: "Demonstrate financial viability with an established line of credit of at least $25,000 with your primary financial institution." Our initial reaction: "Oh crap, you've gotta be solvent." So we're pretty much out of the running right from the get-go, unless our "primary financial institution" (we call her "Mom"-- nah, just kidding) decides to chuck a wad of cash at us for being upright citizens and flossing each day.

Now, it occurs to us that all those junk-mail offers to apply for a Titanium-Iridium MasterCard with a $100,000 credit limit may well miraculously come in handy to meet criterion #1. But even if we did have that kind of credit, we don't think we're up to the task of turning the AtAT studios into a full-fledged Authorized Service Provider. For one thing, the requirement of having "an established walk-in or drop-off service location with... business hours" would probably wreak utter havoc with our anarchic sleep patterns. And then there's the issue of paying the annual $699 AASP Membership Fee for the privilege of being awoken at the ungodly hour of eleven AM by some whiny "novelist" complaining that his PowerBook's hard drive crashed and ate four years of work. Somehow that holds about as much appeal to us as, say, repeatedly slamming our fingers in a car door. Sigh. So we figure we'll forgo setting up the "AtAT House of Mac Repair" and stick strictly to the business of soap opera production.