My computer is having a life crisis. Since I last happily wrote that it had been returned to me, it had a heart attack two days later. I picked up its lifeless body, which was weirdly hot with its fan blowing madly, and tried to perform life support. It played dead. It had been home less than a week when its condition decidedly took a turn for the worse. I called Dr. Apple and reported the symptoms. I am beginning to dislike and mistrust them as much as I am skeptical of all know-it-all-agenda-driven professionals. Of course they said I should ship it back to them for repair, yet again. I dutifully did so. This time they replaced the hard-drive, which they did not replace the last time they had it which had only been only six days earlier. You see my discontent here?So, I have my computer back. It's working, but as as I told the lovely voice of Dr. Apple, I am slowly losing my mind over this. If this machine breaks one more time, I WILL NOT SEND IT BACK. Dr. Apple said that if my computer breaks, he won't make me send it back, but that he might ask me to check some software stuff. Okay, whatever. I just said to him, "You will hear from me. You will remember this conversation, right?" He said, "Yes, Robin, I will remember." Sure. I believe him.
My warranty is good until some time in late August. They will have to send me a new computer if and when this when breaks. In some ways, this computer is pretty new: it's on its third logic board, third power cord, second connector, new battery, and a new hard-drive. How many more components can they replace? Oh don't answer that. I don't want to know. The latest repair required that I restore my files from my back-up. For some reason it backed up to March 28, 2011, even though I had an April 28th backup. So a month's worth of photos is somewhere on the backup disk, but I'm not even sure I want to start digging around to find anything. ENOUGH ALREADY.
So, I've been living a weirdly disconnected life. I've been sporadically using my mom's new PC. I have been slogging along on our five-year old PC. Luckily spring is happening here. My mom is still visiting (and we got to spend Mother's Day with her for the first time in years!). And Indigo came and cooked a fantastic delicious dinner for us. The geese are keeping us amused. The strawberries are blooming in their new bed. And the bluebirds, those magnificent birds of happiness, are keeping me company in this time of computer crisis.
Best News Update: My computer actually died one more time Monday morning. I called Dr. Apple. He asked me to try one more thing to see if it might in fact be a software problem. I did as directed, and the computer was still dead. Dr. Apple said, "Where would you like to pick up a new computer?" Tomorrow at the Apple store!
yay for mom and indigo!
ReplyDeleteugh, computers. i'm so reliant on them, but when things go bad it goes from frustrating to infuriating. it sounds like you are rooting for the thing to just drop dead again already, so you can start fresh under warranty, and i don't blame you if that's the case.
I know first hand how frustrating computer problems can be. Be glad you have something to fall back on. I hope yours has to be replaced before August!!
ReplyDeleteYAY for mom being there on Mother's Day!
If that computer dies one more time, I say you pull out the old Winchester Model 94 and blast that sucker to smithereens!
ReplyDeleteI hate tech problems...I am useless (as you know) in solving them. Bully for you for pushing through this. And, yes, sure, I'm sure Dr. Apple will remember you - NOT.
Happy Mother's Day, Robin -- you've been a good one to your girls.
I spent a lot of the weekend burning out Betsy's PC hard drive and reinstalling Windows and Office. She contracted a Trojan Horse virus Friday, and nothing I ran could get rid of it. Performance degraded until it simply froze in a blue screen of death and wouldn't boot again.
ReplyDeleteShe pretty much only browses and emails, and doesn't retain or work with data, so no loss there, and you probably should burn out a PC's hard drive every couple of years anyway.
But the time lost screwing around with it is maddening.
Hope yours is finally fixed.
I admire your patience. I would have long ago given up.
ReplyDeleteDo hope this fix works, if not Tara has a good solution.
Sounds like you had a great Mother's day. That makes up for a bunch.
As Mr. P described above, my PC contracted a virus, right smack in the midle of my own bout with a panoply of viruses.
ReplyDeleteI love looking at those bluebirds!
I wish we could attract bluebirds to the farm but so far none have shown up even with the changing climate out there. I love those photos
ReplyDeleteOh, my goodness! I just got a new Mac. Still haven't migrated my files. Busy week.
ReplyDeleteI did have an EXCELLENT repair experience with Apple two computers back. The hard drive began to make a noise which I hadn never heard before, so I says to meself, "Uh oh!" I take it to the local friendly independent Apple authorized repair dude who tells me, "I always send the laptops to Apple rather than try to repair them myself." I say okay. He says, "I have to warn you, they NEVER replace hard drives that haven't already failed." I say, "Do it anyway." He sent it in, it came back and he told me, "Wow! They replaced your hard drive. I've never known them to do that."
No b.s., no trying to slip anything past me, no bandaid repairs--just good, prompt, effective service! Perhaps they've grown more corporate int he intervening years.
Your bluebirds are lovely! How can one not be happy when seeing bluebirds!
So, if they replace the CPU is it really the same computer? That's like a human getting a brain transplant.
ReplyDeleteDr. Poison Apple! These comput'n things are so frustrating!
ReplyDeleteit was a fine mom's day.
ReplyDeletethe cpu does the logic, but the harddrive has the memory, so it's a partial brain transplant. the latest "fix" was a new harddrive. we had stored memories on a backup, and have retrieved most of them.
and my 6 year old Sony camera is dying apparently, so I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteI keep trying to remind myself that one day, not that long ago, we would no more have understood the particular despair attending dead computers than we would have understood the fourth dimension. What did we get upset about then? Nothing, I think. We were happy all the #*$&$# time.
ReplyDeleteWhat did we get upset about then? Nothing, I think.
ReplyDelete"What the....?!!! This pen ran out of ink already!"