Tim Samoff // Weblog (old)

July 16, 2004

Macs suck... So I'm going to St. Louis.

Now, before you get all huffy on me, remember… I love Macintosh computers. I have one at home. I use one at work.

But…

Upon my return to work, after having been in California for a week, I was presented with two major problems. One, a computer that wasn’t acting like it should. The second, a heart that wasn’t acting like it should. Now, I don’t know if the two were related in any way (I’m sure the doctors wouldn’t think so), but as I thought back about it this week, I couldn’t help but see some sort of connection. (but, I can only tout any connection such as this as pure conjecture.)

In any case, I have talked plenty about the ol’ heart, but not at all about the computer.

It happened like this:

Monday, 7:00am.

I enter my office to the sound of a tornado. Wait! It’s not a tornado! It’s the sound of my computer’s fan…

And it is blowing so hard that it’s actually windy and cold in my office. This can’t be good.

I know I should have turned my computer off before leaving for a week, but, come on… Since when can’t a G5 remain on for a few days?

But the torrential fan was the least of my worries. That day (well, at least, until I had the heart attack and all), I found that my computer would no longer start up. Even after running the Disk First Aid utility, it was still giving me problems — slow seek times, poor performance, etc.

But, then I had to put my computer repair on hold for a few days longer. Go figure.

This week, I came back to the same problem. Until yesterday, I had to run Disk First Aid every day just to get the computer to turn on. Twice, I even reinstalled the system — which is no easy chore considering all of the updates that have come out since the System CD was created.

Now, mind you, the first time I used a computer was back in 1982. The first time I used a Macintosh was in 1989. Of course, I have been using PeeCees, in their various forms, for years as well. I produced computer games for nearly 8 years, for God’s sake!

Ehem… What I mean is, I’m not a computer novice.

Yesterday, I was reduced to calling Apple Support. I didn’t want to, but I was at my wit’s end. Although my representative was very professional and cordial — and he did know his stuff — he didn’t offer much more advice than I had already tried. In the end, his recommendation was to make sure all of my files were backed-up, format my drive, and reinstall the system from scratch.

Wha…?

Ok, it wasn’t that surprising — I knew it might come to that. So, yesterday, I got the computer to start up one more time and began copying all of my important files to our server.

Today, I finished the back-up and proceeded in wiping my drive clean and installing a fresh system.

This took hours. And I am just barely beginning to reinstall all of the applications I use.

After work today, Julianna and I are driving to St. Louis to hang out with our friends Rob and Erica one last time, before they leave for Tasmania. What a great chance to put all of the cares of this week behind me (and believe me, there are more than just hearts and computers going on here, but I’ll tell you more about those later). And the fact that my computer is actually back up and running will make this all the easier.

Be back tomorrow!

Posted at 1:41 pm

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Man… That’s harsh, Richard!

timsamoff () (URL) - August 10, 2004 at 3:36 pm

This comment is being typed from a Mac.

timsamoff () (URL) - July 20, 2007 at 07:41 am