A semi-useless trudge to Burlington, MA

I had an appointment at the Apple store down in Burlington this morning. As I mentioned earlier my DVD drive bit the dust. Today's appointment was a reschedule from last Sunday's snow storm aborted appointment. The original phone tech who made the appointment for me agreed with my assessment that the drive would need replaced.

Goblin made the 35 minute drive with me. He had the time and I can barely lift the iMac. (It's bulky more than heavy, but I'm broken in so many ways that it's a bad idea for me to try if I don't have to.)

At the appointed time, the tech at the Genius Bar (don't you love that!) had me log into the computer. He saw that I had VMware on my dock and asked me how that was working for me. I said that everything worked just fine except the DVD drive. He made some curious noises and said he wanted to check so things just to be sure that it was a hardware issue.

I often find myself in this situation. I've been dealing with computers for over thirty years (no exaggeration). When I encounter a problem I do my best to diagnose and repair the issue. When I find myself at the end of what I can do, I try to hand my assessment off to the technician I contact to assist me. Inevitably, they assume that I am like every other end user and start from scratch in their assessment of the problem. Eventually, he booted the iMac from an external drive and discovered that the drive was still busted. I could actually see his body physically acquiesce. So than I casually said with a somewhat smug smile, "Hardware, huh?" He met my eyes somewhat sheepishly and said, "Yeah." I said, "Yeah, well. I kind of recognized the sound the drive was making."

He then started taking a bunch of information from me and told me it would be 3-5 business days to fix the thing. I was a bit put out. I mean, it's a standard DVD drive that they use in all their iMacs. He apologized and said that they were out of them and had to order one. He wanted to know if I would be leaving the iMac there while we waited for the drive, or did I want them to call me when it came in.

Goblin thought this was hysterical. I was instantly uncomfortable. Do without my iMac for most of the week??? Bah! Goblin started teasing me in front of the tech. I did acknowledge that I did have three other computers on my desk. The tech started and grinned, "And I thought I was bad."

We all came to the conclusion that it would be best if I took the iMac home and trekked it back down to Burlington when the part came in. I might still have to live without it for a day or two. But, that was much more tolerable.

Bear in mind, if they had paid attention to my assessment, and the fact that my appointment was postponed six days, they could have had a drive in the store. Grrrr... Then again, maybe they were out of drives due to holiday stuff. Who knows?

So, the iMac (BTW, her name is Matilda) is sitting in its rightful place on my desk. I have an external CD/DVD drive that has come in handy in the last week. So, all is tolerable in my computing world right now.

We did take the opportunity to cruise Burlington mall a bit while we were there. I picked up some half-price holiday cards for next year, along with a half-price audio book I've been contemplating. We had a lovely snack at Au Bon Pain, and then hit the ATM on the way home.