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.

Attention deficit computing

After I posted last night, I did set up my iMac. It took some doing to find a spot for it on my desk (see below).



Note the four displays (2 are laptops - one work and one home). The monitor in the corner is connect to two computers (one Windows XP and one Fedora). I am working from home today because we have someone coming to vacuum our air ducts. I also plan to multitask and begin the migration process from my Windows XP laptop and desktop systems to the iMac.

Attention deficit much?

Note: this is my first blog posting using the iMac. YIPPEE!!!

The new arrival

The iMac arrived this afternoon. I haven't plugged it in yet, but I did take it out of the box. For those of you familiar with the O'Reilly books, I placed one in the photo so you could get a sense of how big the monitor is. I'm still rearranging my desk space to make room for my beloved monster.

Squeeeeeeeeeeee...

I placed the order for my iMac this afternoon:

1TB Serial ATA Drive
Apple Keyboard (English) + User's Guide
Apple Mighty Mouse
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB GDDR3
Accessory kit
3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2 GB

Ships: 1 - 3 business days
Delivers: Nov 18 - Nov 24

...pant ... pant ... pant

Frivolous longing

I have access to FOUR Intel-based machines in my home office. One is running an old version of Red Hat, which acts as my sandbox and the proxy server for my son's Internet traffic. One is a very nice laptop for work. Another is a laptop that I bought a year and a half ago, which is sluggish mostly for want of memory (512Mb currently). And finally, one is a four year old desktop barely running XP, which seems incapable of installing any patches and pops up random errors which only a reboot can clear.

I primarily use the sluggish laptop, and failover to the old XP desktop when the laptop really gets on my nerves. About a month ago, both machines were acting up at the same time (this happens periodically). That's when I decided that I had had it with Windows.

I have had a home computer for nearly two decades. In the beginning, I typically spent about $3k on a home system. It usually caused me little frustration and often times provided me with both utility and entertainment. Over the years, as the Microsoft operating system has become more complex and feature rich, it has also become more frustrating to work with. A beefy machine purchased in January is usually gunked up and quirky by June. Part of the issue is the Internet threatscape forces us to run firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, and other anti-performance software to stave off disaster. (Can you say data and financial loss?)

Back in college and graduate school, I was exposed to some of the early MacIntosh computers. They were fun and functional. Recently, I've been exposed to these systems again at work, since about a quarter of our staff use them. It used to be that Mac users had limited choices in software, which was one of the reasons I wasn't interested in them. The other reason that people avoid Macs is price. On the surface, they seem much more expensive than the mass produced wide variety of Windows systems. Well, maybe you get what you pay for.

I decided on that fateful day, a month ago, that my next system was going to be a Mac, AND that I would have one by March at the latest. I also decided that I was going to join the iPod nation. I have had several other MP3 players, which I have liked well enough. However, the amount of free content available as podCasts was the final temptation. (Besides, if I'm going Mac, I might was well go all the way.)

Once I made the decision, the desire began to haunt me. I am nearly salivating in anticipation of this acquisition. I plan to get the beefiest, most tricked-out, iMac that Apple sells. Even though I'll get an educational discount through work, I'll still be spending about $3k. In a way, that seems right. I used to enjoy my home computer that I paid $3k for.

I look forward to coming home and sitting down to a computer that JUST WORKS.

As for the laptop and the XP desktop? My son has expressed an interest in the laptop. We will either shove some more memory in it, or (more likely) load Ubuntu on it. The XP desktop is on borrowed time. A few weeks ago, the hard disk made that telltale clicking sound on boot up. It hasn't done it since, but I know that it's just a matter of time.

There were rumors that Apple was about to put out a slightly improved iMac line in the next week (a pre-holiday refresh). However, I just read that there will be no refreshes to the line before the end of the year. So, I'll probably be ordering it soon. It'd be great to have it by Thanksgiving weekend, since I'll have a lot of time to play with it and get it going.

Materialistic longing is so gauche. But, I really really really want to have fun with a computer again.