MILES to GO || before I sleep

The Story So Far

2010-03-19T06:10:25Z

So. I went to the Apple Store and to PowerBook Guy (third-party Apple product repair) today. I picked up my MacBook Pro from the Apple Store, where they reiterated what the guy told me on the phone: it's Tier 4 damage, must be sent out, and will cost $1240 flat for all repairs, which would include the keyboard, logic board (most expensive part), connection cables, CD drive, hard drive, etc. Apple has to replace anything they see damaged: there's no part/parcel replacement, and heck, even if there were, it would probably cost more.

The guy even showed me the internal damage: chocolate milk and dried-up sugar (?) in small splotches throughout the entire thing (so much for my prompt and level-headed clean-up and reaction). I went to PBG and told the guy this, but for him to open it and give me a different diagnosis would have cost me $125. Based on what I told him, he estimated $1025 for repairs, and even had to ask me to plug in, because the power cable internally and the port for it on the outside had chocolate milk damage.

( The next computer shall be named Chocomac (or something like it) )

It sure would be nice if Will (#repomen) would show his face here in San Francisco so I could collect the $7500 bounty on his head. *sigh*

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A Happy Mystery?

2010-01-21T11:23:06Z

I don't want to jinx things, but my computer problems might somehow have been mysteriously solved.

I did the security update from Apple earlier, along with a whole host of updates from Adobe. I've been going through all my apps to see which ones produce the infamously aggravating SIGTRAP error (or variations of it), but NOTHING has been crashing.

Not even Firefox, which used to take 3-4 tries just to boot, and it never said a peep when it crashed! Photoshop is staying open, with files open. I've had no problems with any other CS4 product (except Acrobat, because Acrobat is a whiny brat that doesn't like my serial number even though I got it from Adobe!), and other programs that crashed or acted weird are now being...fine.

There's Big Fish/Play First Games' "Gotcha! Celebrity Secrets" game that I wanted to try out. It previously tried to load but then crashed without a word. All of a sudden, it worked! I enjoyed 60 horribly bad-in-a-good-way minutes of playing "Where's Waldo" in a cartoon celebrity world, pretending I was a paparazzi blogger.

There's TextWrangler, which updated but then refused to let me update the command keys. Then I did, and...it works fine! No insta-crash like before!

Even Corel Painter 11, which would occasionally crash and occasionally work, now seems to be working fine, even displaying a start-up dialog box that I've never seen before!

I want to do a battery of tests on my most-frequently used apps and ditch apps I don't really use that often while I'm at it. If the errors still come up, I might want to stick to the Erase & Install option just for the sake of having a "fresh" start on the laptop, but if not, I can always cancel my appointment.... Of course, I should probably do this tomorrow and sleep now, because being awake at this hour is really quite bad for my internal clock. Or so people tell me. *flaps her bat wings*

*fingers crossed* I'd much rather go to In-N-Out Burger tomorrow than a crowded Apple Store to get my precious laptop wiped (for no reason???).

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The Next Step

2010-01-21T02:13:16Z

CS4 finally arrived. I attempted to install it yesterday (which took a while) and was told that it was done BUT it needed me to reinstall anyway, because some components or whatnot were missing. Made sense, considering I'd had the CS4 trial on here and the CS3 Clean Script the "wonderful" folks at Adobe had me run removed some vital CS4 components, too. So I restarted, turned off all the extra bells and whistles running in the background, and reinstalled.

It said done! Successful! Hurrah!

And then I ran Photoshop.

I waited.

It crashed.

AGAIN.

Also, because it crashed, I thought I wouldn't be able to register the applications in-program, so I did so online, at Adobe.com. Apparently that means I don't get my free benefit!? But I tried opening Dreamweaver CS4 and registering through there, and that seemed to go smoothly, except I still didn't get my benefit email. I want that damn benefit, especially after all the BS I've been through with this.

Dreamweaver isn't crashing at all. It's sitting pretty, which is nice and a bit of a relief. But I still need Photoshop. I need it soon, for my class. And because Corel and the Citrix plug-in were both crashing with the same (looked the same, anyway; an error that long, I'm not exactly going to read it line-by-line, although I could always compare them using TextWrangler...hmmm...) SIGTRAP error too, I've determined this is a system error and I need to do something about it.

LIKE, YESTERDAY.

So, I'm going to do an Erase and Install. But not on my own, no. Because much as I love software and think I'm pretty spiffy with it, something as large as this requires the "delicate" hand of a so-called Genius (a.k.a. someone to walk me through this whole mess). I'm going to go there, at my appointed time, bring my Time Machine drive, tell them the last schmuck at the downtown store told me to do something that's not possible with my OS version and he should have known that, and I want them to FIX the issue however they can (and for free, because dammit, it wasn't doing this before, I haven't changed anything, and this isn't fair!).

I pray that this will:
a) fix the problem with the crashing, because it's caused by occasionally corrupt files that can't be repaired the usual way
b) allow me to restore all my applications, or at least the ones I really, really need and paid money for
c) not take more than one to two days, because frankly, I have homework to do and trying to do it on a PC is nearly as agonizing as thinking this is fixed and then finding out it's not

*pray pray pray*

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OSM!

2009-08-04T23:42:30Z

So, I'm chilling here at SFO (San Francisco International Airport, for those that don't speak airport code). I shelled out $7.99 for a T-Mobile Hotspot Day Pass, because even though I don't visit airports (or Starbucks, or even Borders) quite often enough to get a Hotspot account/shell out $40 a month, sitting here for 3 hours nursing a Coca-Cola and reading the August issue of Wired just doesn't cut it for me. I need to be connected, which is kind of sad. I sort of miss my childhood. :P

( Tech jargon )

( More win and OSM )

I'm actually somewhat looking forward to going home, if just to sleep on my own bed (though the AeroBed Mom got was pretty damn comfortable, no matter what Eva said about it being too soft) and have steady Wi-Fi in all my usual haunts. Also, MAIL! And money. And work for a week, until I have to get my butt to DC. And in-between all that, family visits and the Orange County Fair. Should be fun.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is stuck in my head, along with a plotbunny for a multichapter Sailor Moon fic I meant to write for sm_monthly and never got around to. I mean really, ANOTHER multichapter? I wish I could churn stuff out as fast as moodwriter, with her "Hate, Prejudice and Secret Intentions" (I think I got that title right) Dramione fic that I've been reading lately. Good stuff! I've also got to catch up on Stargirl's "Tsuki no Namida," an AR of the Silver Millennium, since the latest chapter is up for critiquing on one of the_circlet communities. I'm not a big fan of walking into a long-ish multi-chapter fic blind, so I'll start with the beginning and go from there. So far, it's got an interesting premise but some grammar issues that irk me. But hey, SAILOR MOON FIC. I ought to get writing!

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The Dreaded Click

2009-07-27T23:38:30Z

My Western Digital 500 GB hard drive started CLICKING today.

I was still able to get it to mount, but I get the feeling that data isn't moving from my laptop to the drive; normally when it does, the light on the front of the drive will be going up and down. Right now, it's just still, with one little segment near the top "burnt out" (it's not really burnt out, as it does light up every now and again, but lately that section doesn't light up).

I've tried stopping the Time Machine backup, ejecting the drive and remounting it, but that doesn't always help. Even power-cycling doesn't always do the trick, which has me a bit worried. Previous SNAFUs with this or other WD drives have caused me to switch from USB to Firewire for the port of choice, and make sure that it's powered directly into a wall socket, versus a surge protector (which seems stupid, but meh, it's what they told me).

Anyway, after it started to click this morning, I got worried, so I looked into whether it was still under warranty. It is, and in fact, I can upgrade to a 1 TB drive for $20 off the MSRP, provided I ditch the current warranty on my existing drive. Thus, a quandary: do I wait for the drive to asplode before getting a new one, or do I act preemptively, assuming that no click is a good click?

Idea that just got thrown out the window: use a new 1 TB for a data external and use the old data external (250 GB) for Time Machine. That won't work, because if my internal is 300 GB, then I need at least that much (double is better) for a Time Machine. I'm actually kind of cutting it close with the 500 GB Time Machine I'm currently using.

I also have conflicting "to do" stuff with the laptop itself. See, I was worried about losing my iTunes library, so I moved the larger one to my external hard drive. That means it doesn't get backed up with my Time Machine. So if I do something stupid, like delete files off my external, I'm S.O.L. I've been thinking about moving my complete iTunes library back onto my internal HD; I have the space for it. It'll start getting backed up with Time Machine (unless the clicks really do spell bad news), and that should all be gravy. I don't really need two libraries, one iPod-sized and the other not. I can just manually sync what I want through checking and unchecking tracks and playlists and such.

What confused me was that the Genius at the Genius Bar (honestly, at this point, I'm starting to think it's a rather lame title) suggested moving my iPhoto library onto an external! But then I can't access it when I'm out and about, which is why I'd always kept it on the internal. Plus, it's getting backed up by the Time Machine! Apparently using Backup for these purposes is bad, due to the format Backup uses or something.

And don't get me started on the whole battery thing. The laptop's BEEN plugged in, and yet it's mysteriously at only 97% charge, which probably is a little over 2 hours. I'm sure the battery life is supposed to be longer than that, considering I bought it just a few months ago. And yet it still passes Apple's tests.... I've stopped using Firefox 3.5 for now, since it was proving to be a major CPU hog and probably didn't help with my battery problem.

So, yeah, lots of things to do and I have no idea how or where to start. Grr.

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