Just Shoot Me Now

After a tough night with about two hours sleep and a blinding headache from my sinus infection, my day took another downward spiral. My 2-year old Mac desktop computer failed as I tried to wake it from its sleep mode. No matter what I did, the machine did not get past a "white screen of death," as Mac users fondly call the condition. I tried every trick to revive it, as noted on Apple forums, except for one that sounded too frightening to even attempt.  Meanwhile, my head continued to pound.

Mr. Jim reminded me that I ponied up for the 3-year Apple Care protection program when I bought it at our local Apple Store. (That decision turned out to be an investment worth every penny.)  I called the 800 number, and a nice young man (who spoke English!) walked me through the same procedures I had followed repeatedly for over an hour before I surrendered and made the call.  The "white screen of death" remained. He then transferred me over to a nice young lady (who spoke English!) who would take me from there. She walked me through the very last keyboard/power button/standing-on-my-head trick. That didn't work either. I could internally hear the kind of music soundtrack that is popular in scary slasher movies.

The gal on the phone said that I needed to take it in to the Genius Bar at our local Apple Store, and she gave me an appointment for about an hour later. More music of impending doom played in my noggin. You see, our Apple Store is located within the biggest shopping mall within a 100-mile radius. And this is tax free weekend in Tennessee, where thousands of people per hour are descending upon the mall. About half of them are shopping at the Apple Store.  

Just shoot me now.

I despise malls. I despise people with no manners who routinely populate the malls. And I certainly despise 150 decibels of noise when I have a blinding headache.  But I am one of those people, sad to say, that is a heavy computer user.  I'm addicted to it like crack cocaine. So onward we marched to the mall. After getting through the backed-up traffic, I dropped Mr. Jim off at the entry nearest the Apple Store. He carted the machine in while I circled around and finally found a parking space about a quarter of a mile away.  Luckily, I was able to dodge a woman driving a minivan that almost t-boned my car in the parking lot. It was more lucky for her than me because my inner feisty girl would have turned into a raving maniac and our entanglement would have been worthy of the six o'clock news.

After hiking the urban jungle within the cavernous building, and risking physical harm by several nincompoops who can't walk and talk/text on their cell phones in simultaneous fashion, I got to the store and proceeded to wade through a sea of bodies.  A nice Genius Bar guy plugged in my computer and ran a diagnostic program from their server. After about 10 minutes, he said that it looked like a failure of the operating system.  But it would take another hour or so for them to wake it from its pitiful state.

So we bravely went into the teaming mass of people within the mall, in search of rest rooms and a little food (since it was well past lunchtime).  It looked like the food court area contained several thousands of people. Think of the notorious "food fight" scene in Animal House, and multiply it out by the population of India. Do you get the idea? And the decibel level was off the charts. We stumbled around, like the two sick old farts that we are, and escaped with our lives, a diet soda, and some cookies. After another 10 minutes of searching for a place to sit in the mall (the food court was filled past capacity), we found a hard bench to wait out our scheduled time to go back and brave the Apple Store chaos.

The cookies were quite delicious. Ah, a bright spot! We have to find whatever sliver of happiness that we can. And we took on the time-honored tradition of people-watching as the minutes ticked. Oh my gosh, do people not check the mirror before they go out in public?  Do they not even own a mirror?  There is a reason why our country is in serious trouble, based on our unscientific sampling. The bag-lady style of clothes that I only wear around the house would be an improvement for most of the folks that we saw. Apparently, wearing several sizes too small for one's voluminous frame is in fashion. Who knew? Not me. And the majority of adolescent girls must shop the close-out sales of Victoria Secret. Do mothers not check their children's clothing apparel before they leave home?  Ah, we must be fuddy-duddies who live a sheltered life, relics of our time. 

Are you still with me on this story? I'm almost done, I promise.  

We finally returned back to the store, desperately attempting to pole-vault our way back to the Genius Bar at the far end of the Apple Store. And the nice young man assigned to reviving my computer told me the news that I dreaded to hear. The hard drive was toast.  

The silver lining in the whole episode is that I have faithfully used the Time Machine function on my Mac (saving files to a dedicated external drive) and I had the good sense to purchase the Apple Care warranty when I bought the computer. Both are worthy investments that partially save my crispy fried bacon. They will install a new hard drive and operating system for me free of charge. I will get the computer back Monday afternoon. There are two rain clouds hanging over me after I pick it up. I will have to restore the files from my external drive, which will take several hours, and then reload all of my software, which will take several days.

It is curious that I had a premonition that this very thing - a hard drive failure - was going to happen. Don't ask me why I felt this way, because my computer is just shy of 2 years old. Yesterday afternoon, I had researched a couple of online backup services and even figured out which one I was going to get. As I noted in a recent post, I am quite compulsive about backing up my files. But I had never backed up all my programs to make them easier to reload. Most of my programs were downloaded off of the web, so it's not like I have DVDs of them sitting around. Also, if something catastrophic happened to the external hard drive used for backups (e.g., spontaneously failing), an online backup service would provide another measure of protection. I researched a couple of companies and decided which one to use. But I didn't sign up right then and there because I didn't feel well enough to go through the hassle of setting it up. GAH!

Until I can enjoy a reunion with my Mac and restore its usefulness to its former glory,  I am using Mr. Jim's laptop. So I don't know when I will return to posting.  Maybe there will be a Wordless Wednesday photo. Maybe not. Perhaps I will participate in my own photo challenge next Saturday. Perhaps not. In the meantime, I hope that this tale of woe provides you with a little bit of amusement and a healthy dose of paranoia about your computer too. It could fail at any time.  

Heed the wisdom of experience. It's worth it to get an extended warranty on a computer.  (Unless you decide to purchase an HP brand machine. Then the warranty is a waste of money, based on Mr. Jim's entanglement with the HP brand before we jumped on the Apple bandwagon in 2011.) And back up those files!