Macs

I hope you like how my blog looks because I don’t. I miss my pink and green! As soon as I have some free time, am in the mood and HAVE MY iMac BACK!! I will get things back to looking how they should.
10 or so days ago I said I bought a 500 GB hard drive and I said I wished I could find a couple 120 GB drives. Well, some good and not so good things have happened since then.
First, there was an issue with my credit card I used to order the 500 GB drive. After a couple of days of talking with computergeeks.com I ended up giving them a different number over the phone. The woman I spoke with said she would just cancel my old order and create a new one with new cc number. I thought all was well until today, when the drive showed up. IT WAS A SATA DRIVE!! I needed an IDE drive. So I called them up and said “HAY U STUPIT FHUKS SENDED ME TEH WRONG DRIVE!!11111” except it was a little more civil than that. The dude I talked to said I ordered a SATA drive and I didn’t really push the issue since he was going to give me an RMA and in house credit. But then I looked at the RMA and it said I needed to pay shipping to send the drive back, AND my credit didn’t cover shipping. So I’m thinking to myself… I paid $9 shipping to get the drive to me, and I’ll probably have to pay at least another $9 to send it back. PLUS another $9 to get the correct drive sent back to me? I DON’T THINK SO!!
So I called computer geeks back and explained the situation a little better and now I’m waiting for a new RMA that covers shipping the wrong drive back. And I got the seekrit kodez to get free shipping when I re-order the correct drive. That made me feel better. I was hoping for an amazon.com type experience where I say “You sent the wrong thing!” and they say “srsly srry d00d! We’ve just sent the correct drive to you. You can send the wrong drive back to us whenever you feel like it and we’ll take care of that shipping.” but I’m not going to bitch too loudly about the thing with computergeeks.com. In the end, I guess I’m happy. It just means a week or 2 more with this crappy drive in my PC that keeps making my computer reboot thanks to FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE. I so can’t wait until I don’t see that again.
Along the same good news – bad news – ok news lines of hard drives, I happened to be at Office Depot on Sunday, and I saw that they had 100 GB Maxtor drives for $29 after a $50 rebate. Now, I pretty much can’t ever deal with rebates, but small (relatively speaking) drives like that seem to be harder and harder to find, so I scooped one up. I was expecting the bits that I needed to mail in to be printed with my receipt, but all I got was a thing saying I can get $10 off my next purchase of $25 or more. I figured I could just find the rebate online once I got home. But when I got home I found out that the rebate had expired on the day before; on the 3rd. OH NOSE!!1 I hopped back on my bike and rode back to Office Depot. When I was there I took a look to make sure that I hadn’t made a mistake in reading the sign about the price. I had the right drive, but it too said that the rebate expired on the 3rd. I was a little bummed that I would have to keep looking for drives, but I was glad that I hadn’t opened up the drive that I bought. I decided to act a little facetious and asked a dude that was working there where I could find the rebate. He said it would be printed out with my receipt. I told him I just bought one of the drives and I didn’t get a rebate. He looked at the sign and made sure I had the right item and then did a little computer hacking and looked it up online. Then he said he would take care of it and just give it to me for the price with the rebate, but without the bother. So I bought a 2nd drive! The 2 drives at the reduced price were actually about $22 less than the single drive without the rebate. And to top it off, there were actually 120 GB drives in the boxes, instead of the 100 GB labeled. H00ray!!
On the down side, my iMac is STILL dead and I haven’t heard anything after several voice and emails. I should probably try calling Apple again right now. I am so over that computer!

Hello internets,
My iMac is still dead but at this point I think it’s mostly my fault that nothing is changing with that. Whenever there are disruptions in the force and especially when I meet resistance in rectifying the disruption, I tend to just ignore the situation all together. That’s the situation right now. My iMac G5 is sitting in its box in my apartment in the exact same place it has been since I got it home from the Apple store last Wednesday. The thing is a headache I’m not ready to deal with. The Apple store people told me they would repair it for free (for the 4th time – 3rd time in something like the last 8 months) but if I want it replaced then I need to email someone at Apple and beg them to authorize a replacement. Sounds simple enough, but I’m just not ready to face their reply that will likely say “LOL P0WNT!!1” or something to that effect. I’ve heard way too many empty promises over this computer to have any faith in this last resort person I’m supposed to email. Actually, I guess the true last resort would be the legendary sjobs@mac.com email address where according to legend, “Steve Jobs’ personal assistant” will get back to me and set my world straight. I’m not sure if I have enough pull to make that happen, but then all I’d have to do is write an amazing blog post about the saga with this ill iMac and get it dugg on digg.com. I just don’t know if I have all of that in my nature. I’d probably just bend over, take it, and just get the thing fixed for free once again and hope it doesn’t die again.
And that’s the thing that really bothers me the most. I’m really not after a new computer. My iMac G5 does everything I need it to do and keeps me smiling until it dies. All I really want is some faith in my machine. A piece of mind that will allow me to rely on it. I had this iMac G5 for just over 2 months when it died for the first time. That was really disappointing, but I thought all was well when it stayed running for over a year after the initial fix. But since this last rash of breakdowns I am really starting to question the reliability of Apple. If this were my first computer then I might be like “Ok, I guess computers don’t last very long.” I mean, this machine is over 2 years old. But this isn’t my first computer. In fact, I have an Apple Quadra 800 that is around 13 years old and still runs great! And I have my 7.5 year old 350 MHz PowerMac G3 that currently has a 3 week uptime. I’ve never had any problems with either of these computers and I don’t think luck has anything to do with it. Is it unreasonable for me to expect another 5 years of life out of my iMac G5? I don’t think so.
So that’s where things sit with my iMac G5. I need to email this person and hope/pray that they see things from my point of view and authorize the replacement of my computer.