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March 25, 2003
*taptap* Is this thing on?
Hi. My name is Ian. You may remember me from such blogs as Crouching Tiger Hidden Beaver and, well, Crouching Tiger Hidden Beaver.
I've been missing for awhile. A long time. I'd like to say I have a really cool story to tell about why I've been missing, but... well, why don't I just tell it and you can let me know.
On 6 February, my computer, one of the early PowerBook G4 titanium laptops that entered the market early 2001, experienced a kernel panic. It was something I had never seen before. It panicked on me over the course of several successive reboots before I gave up, since my friends showed up and we were going out to dinner. The next morning, it booted up fine, so I went back to business as usual.
On 13 February, I updated the OS to Mac OS X 10.2.4, which required a reboot, the first one that I had to do since my successful boot the previous Friday. After the reboot, I had the same problem as the previous week with repeated kernel panics shortly after login. Once or twice, it froze up on me before login.
On 15 February, I took it into a reputable local service center to have it inspected. Diagnosis was free, after all, as long as it wasn't a software problem. This was definitely not a software problem. They did a hardware consistency check on the machine and declared one of my memory chips bad. Actually, I think they declared the slot bad, not necessarily the chip. Either way, they removed the memory chip from my lower memory slot and gave the machine back to me. It booted up and logged in. Cool. Let's see how it goes.
I got about an hour's use out of it before it panicked again, and this time, it wouldn't even boot to a login screen. Got the bong, no video. I'm not sure what that translates to in the usual Intel lexicon, but I'd equate it to being something akin to "no POST". So I resolved to take the machine back to the service center on Monday.
Did I mention that Monday, 17 February, was the day of the blizzard in NYC? The service center was open and I went anyway, but none of the PowerBook technicians made it in that day, so my laptop sat around waiting for techs to get in Tuesday morning.
Tuesday the techs confirmed what I already knew: the thing won't boot. So, after getting some price checks on what it would cost to have them replace the motherboard vs. sending it to Apple to have them fix it, I had the thing sent to Apple for repair. The price was pretty much the same and Apple would replace any other bad components for the same price as the motherboard alone for the local service center. Turnaround was supposed to be ten business days. And so the wait began, starting on 18 February.
Sporadic contact was made with the local service center for status after two weeks had passed and continued through to last Tuesday, when it was determined that the laptop was full repaired with a few "buts." From what I've been able to determine so far, my laptop has now made the trip to and from Apple three times. The first time, they replaced the motherboard, but it came back and didn't boot, so it was returned. The second time, they replaced the motherboard again and the top case (figure that was cosmetic?). Still didn't boot properly. The third time, they replaced the motherboard, the processor, the kitchen sink, and the hard drive, and declared my one remaining chip bad. They pulled my old hard drive.
Excuse me? I paid a premium price to have the data safeguarded?
They sent the hard drive back to the local service center, which was unable to do an easy copy of data from the old drive to the new. So, as of last Tuesday, I had to decide whether or not I wanted them to perform data recovery on the hard drive. I opted to have the data recovered, at additional cost to me, because there was irreplaceable data on the drive that I hadn't backed up.
Then I get a call on Friday asking if I wanted to go ahead with the data recovery. The call woke me up, so I wasn't exactly thinking clearly. By thinking clearly, what I mean to say is that I wasn't awake enough to cuss out the tech or question why they hadn't started on Tuesday when I approved the data recovery; I had the service notes checked later, the one on Tuesday definitely indicated that data recovery was approved. In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing I was barely coherent because there's nothing like pissing off the guy that's supposed to be pulling your data off your old drive to ensure that you lose something important.
As of today, they're still working on it. I've been crippled in that I've had to resort to bumming computer time off of friends to even check my email. Email has to be done over a web interface that is disgustingly unwieldy. It got so desperate that I finally had to unpack an old Windows 98 PC and track copper cable to get back to some semblence of function. For two weeks, I was totally unable to job search, not that I missed much.
And when all's said and done, I'll probably be out nearly $1000.
In the meantime, my first two weeks of enforced Luddism I was really frazzled. I'm a computer junkie. Most of my entertainment is drawn from the computer, esp. since I didn't bother to get cable hooked up in my new apartment. Hell, I don't even have broadcast television here, which is a blessing and a curse. The time without my computer, which had been my stereo (MP3's and external speakers) and my DVD player really sucked. It sucked to the point that, in addition to the Windows PC, I also had to find and unpack the DVD player and a console or two to pass the time.
I started buying newspapers. New York Post and Daily News, at first, because they were light and easy to carry, but eventually switched to the New York Times. Now, I'm sure that I can get all the same information online, but I have to say that I really like the good old fashioned feel of newsprint in my hands. Besides, it's easier to lug around on the train when I'm bumping around the city. The New York Times became my good friend. And, for once, I felt informed enough to actually form opinions about all the stuff that's been going on around the world.
I got my MCSE 2000 (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, WIndows 2000). Started working on a CCNA (Certified Cisco Network Administrator).
Then the weather got nice and I started spending time in that really big room with the ceiling that changes colours. Pulled out the inline skates for the first skate of the season on Saturday with my friend, Danielle. Weather's been gorgeous the last few days and I've been out enjoying it as much as I can.
I'm still without my laptop, though, and I want to get it back soon so that I can do my taxes.
Oh, and if anyone out there knows of anyone looking for a network administrator, I'm still looking for a job.
Posted by KinCross at March 25, 2003 10:10 PM