very simple

I’m still stuck on my powerbook, because the new optical drive for my iMac has still not arrived at Tekserve.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my powerbook, for what it is, which is a useful computer to travel with. That’s why I got the 12" model. But for regular computing, I really need at least my 15" iMac screen – I feel like I’m going cross-eyed after two weeks of this. Not to mention the non-ergonomicness of it all. And the wires running every which way since I have all of my stuff (backup drive, printer) now plugged into the side of the pbook rather than discretely in the back of the iMac.

It’s all just so frustrating. How friggin’ hard is it for them to get an optical drive? I mean, they are put in every computer that Apple makes…

Well, it turns out that it may be my optical drive that is intermittently failing. Went to Tekserve this morning, and after 3 hours and another phone call to Apple, it’s getting fixed for free. So that’s something. My Apple Care actually expired on May 2. My problems started appearing on April 30. But since Apple spent three weeks giving me the runaround, Tekserve couldn’t agree to repair it for free until I got a special code from Apple that essentially said they would pay for the repair. Note that this was a different code than the case number I’ve been carrying around for three weeks. I spent so long on hold while at the store, that they set me up with my own phone and a chair.

I will say that the Tekserve guys were awesome (you may have seen the store featured in the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie’s laptop dies). It’s an old-school mac repair shop on 23rd street, and they know their stuff. It’s too bad that, even though they were the original apple specialists here in NYC, and are still the best repair shop around, Apple is obviously trying to put them out of business. When I originally went in to buy a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, they didn’t have them for months after release, even though they had placed multiple orders. A friend of mine had to cancel her order for a pink iPod mini last year, because she waited two months for the order to be filled.

And the latest news is that Apple is planning on opening another Apple Store in Manhattan, only two blocks away from Tekserve. It’s fairly obvious predatory behavior, but it makes me want to frequent Tekserve even more.

In the meantime, while my iMac is in the shop getting overhauled, I’ll be operating from my little powerbook. I just spent a few hours restoring all of my iMac settings to the PBook, including all of these wonderful blog files.

So. I finally got my Tiger replacement DVD today. And I put it in my computer. and it launched, and told me to restart in order to start the install, and I did. And then the computer sat there. For two hours. refusing to start up from the dvd drive. Or do anything. Thankfully, In my first, 6 hour, session with the Apple brainiacs three weeks ago, I did acquire the very useful knowledge of how to force a reboot from the hard drive even when there’s a cd/dvd in the drive. Computer started up fine. Tried installing other software, just to test out the drive. That installed fine.

So I called Apple. again (I’ve now spoken to: Elizabeth, Rob, Erica, Paul and William). My favorite part was where the automated phone tree actually hung up on me twice instead of transferring me to a tech. After I waited on the phone for 15 minutes each time. And then finally transferred me to the "overflow" tech, who had no inkling of how to help me. So then I had to get transferred again. And then, after all of the remarks about my "really extensive" case file, William told me he thought it was my computer, not the disk, because, in his mind, there’s just no way that I could get two faulty disks. Ignoring, of course, the fact that there were apparently hundreds, if not thousands, of these defects floating around the northeast after the Tiger launch.

Never mind that I spent six hours with Elizabeth two weeks ago testing out my entire hardware configuration (his response? "well a lot can happen in two weeks"). or that the drive could read the dvd just fine when it was inserted, but the dvd wouldn’t boot the computer. or that I tested the drive by re-installing one of the myriad of programs that I hadn’t gotten around to installing after my prior hard drive wipe and restoration.

So now I’ve got to drag my iMac to TekServe on Saturday (they being the folks who sold me the original faulty disk) and get it checked out. To make sure I don’t have a "progressive optical disk failure". Which will, of course, be covered not only because I have Apple care, but even if it’s a software problem, Apple’s going to pick up the tab because they’ve given me such a hard time. The tech who lied to me a week and a half ago about my software being shipped out last monday (only to call back this saturday to find out that it was still sitting in the warehouse) was probably what pushed me over the edge.

Ignoring the fact that if you billed out, at my current hourly billing rate, the amount of time that I spent on the phone I could not only buy a new G5 iMac and a flat panel TV, or that I’ve actually bought three apple computers in the past three years (my iMac, my powerbook, and an iBook for my brother), and hence, am an extremely good customer, I’m really losing my faith in the company. Mistakes happen. I get that. Software can be defective. But the complete runaround that I’ve gotten from the company is really souring me. I’m certainly not going to be encouraging others anymore.

Apparently, my Safari problems a few weeks ago were only a minor precursor to the hell that was my attempt to install Tiger.

On Saturday, fresh from re-tape measuring the entirety of my new apartment, I stopped off at Tekserve to pick up a copy of Tiger. Got home, dropped it into my disk drive, and got a disk error. Repeatedly. Gave up trying to install at about 1 in the morning.

On Sunday, I went back to Tekserve, and got a new copy. The customer service lady mentioned that I wasn’t the only one having problems (you’d think that this would cause some hesitation on my part, but nooooo, I need to have the shiny new operating system, so I must forge ahead). The new disk? Got about halfway through installing before it crapped out on my too. So I called Apple. Because at this point, I’ve got half an OS on my system. Elizabeth (who is my new best friend, by the way), said that Tiger is actually really picky, and the fact that I had problems with two disks means that it might be a problem with my computer, rather than the disk. So we walk through repairing any disk errors (there were none), and she suggests an Archive and Install, rather than upgrade. So I start that. It does get a little further, but still stops in the middle. So I call Elizabeth back (I have her direct extension at this point). Hours of attempts go by. Finally. I decide to do a clean install, because I back up everything nightly onto a LaCie drive (see? I can be smart sometimes). Still doesn’t work. At this point, my only solution is to do a clean install of Tiger, which I do. Elizabeth and I then start manually copying Tiger folders to my computer, just to see if we can find a problem, because she does agree at this point that it doesn’t look like the problem is my computer.

Well. About halfway through copying the seven thousand or so system files, we start getting file error messages. That certain miscellaneous files cannot be read. In the meantime, I had gotten on my laptop (again with the smart – two computers is pretty handy once in a while) and on the Apple discussion board there appeared to be all sorts of people having similar problems. So we agree that there must be something wrong with the batch.

She’s sending me a new copy (from a different batch, naturally), and they’re going to try and figure out what’s wrong. She thought I was the most awesome customer ever, both because of my patience through the whole process, and my willingness to experiment. And I swear I could hear her doing the dance of joy when I mentioned my rigorous backup routine. Because apparently a lot of customers don’t do that sort of thing…

But I swear. If it weren’t for the fact that Microsoft sucks rotten eggs, and the fact that Apple does have awesome customer service, I’d have thrown my iMac out the window at this point. Because how do you ship an entire batch of corrupt disks on a major launch release? Quality control? something?

I’ve been reinstalling the oodles of software that I had on my computer, and it’s going to take me at least a few more days to get everything up and running…I didn’t lose too much that I can see so far. The biggest loss that I’ve found so far is the contents of my delicious library. Which sucks because I manually entered all the information…

The plus side? My computer does seem to be running a heck of a lot faster…I guess that’s what happens when you completely wipe it of three years worth of scattered files…

Stay tuned for my further attempts…

My love of Apple computers generally knows no bounds (and it’s love of the product, not corporate policies like suing bloggers, that I’m talking about), but once in a great while? They border on wintel levels of incompetence. Like this week. They released a "minor" update to the operating system, which was supposed to enhance certain functions prior to the launch of Tiger. But instead? This happened. And obviously not just to me.

I even tried all of the workarounds suggested in the apple support forums, but, unfortunately, none of them worked for me. So I resorted to the ultimate workaround. downgrading to Safari 1.2. For me, Safari wouldn’t just crash when encountering java, it wouldn’t launch at all. The icon would bounce up and down in the dock for about 30 seconds, and then I’d just get an error message that it crashed. And while I temporarily switched over to Firefox (you know, to access those pesky support forums), I couldn’t change my default browser because, well, you can only control that from inside Safari. So that kind of sucked. Hopefully there’ll be a fix in a few days (or I’ll just wait to upgrade to Tiger (and Safari 2.0) on the 29th). But this certainly isn’t the best way to encourage your user base to go out and spend another $129 in two weeks on a product was being developed at the same time…

So I’m reading through the NY Times RSS feed this morning, and I get to this op-ed, which, in all seriousness, proclaims "drunk dialing" as the newest problem of the information age, thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones.

Uh…OK.

Except it’s certainly not a "new phenomenon", and back in the technological dark ages of my college days, before anyone (let alone everyone) had a cellphone, drunk dialing was a pretty common occurrence. In fact, if they kept records on this sort of thing, I imagine that it’s a "phenomenon" that developed around the same time as the telephone.

Cellphones certainly make it easier to drunk dial with abandon, thanks to stored numbers and the availability of a phone at all times, but that’s certainly not the perspective taken by the op-ed in phrases like this intro:

To the list of the unforeseen hazards that seem to plague the information age, we can now add another: "drunk dialing."

This late-night cellular faux pas joins such exalted company as the "mistaken dial" (when your mobile phone, inadvertently prompted, dials a number in your address book by mistake) and the annoying ring tone that can interrupt big job interviews or Communion service.

But unlike its predecessors, drunk dialing usually limits itself to times long after the close of business and beyond the daily commute.

So, apparently something that existed for decades has been "preceded" by the type of incidents that can only exist in cellphones…It’s only been a week since Safire retired, and they’ve already forgotten how to use the english language.

Maybe I’m just being bitter because, back in those neanderthal college days, I actually almost missed a final exam thanks to the drunk dialing antics of my friend Dande. It was probably my mistake to keep the phone and the alarm clock next to each other, but when the phone rang at 3a.m., I first turned the alarm clock off before realizing that the phone was still ringing. Fell back into a deep sleep and woke up at 8:30 in the morning. The exam, which I ultimately arrived at still in my pajamas, had started at 8.

It’s actually kind of amusing that the original estimates of 3-5 years to fix the signal lines on the A/C trains have been drastically reduced to 9 months (hey – maybe the MTA administration won’t all be getting new automobiles this year!). And the only train that has completely stopped service is the C, for now.

What I find really amazing though, as related in this NY Times article, is that our incredibly antiquated transportation system (101 years old) may actually be a benefit in this situation (an extremely slow benefit, but still). I mean, if the entire system was dependent on computers and conductor-less trains (which they were going to start testing next year), there’s no way that they could engage in the kind of stop-gap measures they’re engaging in now.

I know the point of this article in the Post is to highlight the fact that Apple’s new products are lower-margin, and thus have the potential to lower Apple’s overall profit margin if they sell really well, but a few things stuck out to me in a way that was perhaps unintended, particularly this:

Well, Thanksgiving is over in my house, after a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. well, it was rousing for the first fifteen minutes, and then everyone wandered off to get dessert and have side conversations, and the game eventually had to get called due to people having to leave.

In computer related news, we did eventually manage to get my stepmother’s computer working on the wireless network, thanks to some help from my stepmother’s nephew, who actually works in IT for ESPN. It always helps to have someone who knows what they’re doing (as opposed to a lawyer with some technical know-how) around. What he did involved rooting around the DOS menus though, and I’m pretty sure that’s more than what’s expected of the average computer user.

And now I’m already locked in my room, under to covers. Cough still hasn’t gone away, and I’m bordering on antisocial. Tomorrow I’m going to try to take the car and spend a few hours by myself, maybe do some shopping. I still have to get a wedding gift for one of my best friends who got married this summer, and I have in my head the idea of what I want to get, but actually executing the plan involves a little work, as well as compliant antique shops (which are much easier to attack in the Berkshires than in Manhattan). If I can’t find what I want, I’ll have to come up with a Plan B, since I’m sure there’s nothing left on the registry at this point…

Goodnight y’all. I’m going to bury myself under the covers and watch the PBS documentary about Broadway…They’re up to the last 25 years.

Finally made it to the country, after a few false starts in trying to leave the city (note to self: when dad calls and says be at his apartment at 1 so that we can leave, show up at 2:15. It won’t make a difference).

My hacking cough is entertaining everyone. I think they’re all worried that I’m literally going to cough up a lung. pleasant, huh?

And the computer situation has been figured out, sort of. In that it can’t be figured out. The wireless network works (as evidenced by my ability to publish this entry), but apparently the brilliant IT guys at my stepmother’s office configured her computer so that it only can connect to the internet through dial-up to her Company’s VPN. They appear to have removed the ability to set up new network connections. Because even though she bought the computer herself, the couldn’t conceive of the thought that she might want to be able to something other than access her work e-mail through the phone line. In 2004. I’m going to try a few other backdoor things over the weekend, but I think she might be stuck until they can reinstall the correct software programs.

And now my dad is feeding the dog a peanut butter sandwich filled with medication (the dog is old and arthritic). Exciting, huh? And I wonder why, by the end of the weekend, I’m always jonesing to get back to my little apartment in the middle of a construction site…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! (and thanks, Rick, for the warm wishes).