Month: November 2006

flickr krma

[This post originally appeared in Dullicious, where I blogged as Barbie-dull for several years.]

The most viewed photo from my flickr photostream is:

canal 96: http://www.flickr.com/photos/koalie/81160242/
5573 views
Nobody counts it as a favorite, it has 1 comment, it has 4 tags: 200601-Paris, "Canal 96", paintings, wall.

I was thinking some website had linked to it. Tonight, I googled “Canal 96″. (NOT safe for work).

So my tip, if you’d like good flickr karma on a photo, is to name it according to a pron website.

Bad, bad luck

Here is the latest update on the Precious.

Bottom line:
Precious is still pretty broken. I’m wicked frustrated. I raised my voice on the phone, nearly lost my temper. And I’m really glad I purchased a macbook pro.

Summary:

  1. 02-Nov-2006: Service Requested.
  2. 04-Nov-2006: Repair completed.
  3. 04-Nov-2006: Product shipped via DHL + link to track the shipment.
  4. 06-Nov-2006: DHL tracking page claims delivery was attempted at 9:40 am and intructs to call them.
  5. 07-Nov-2006: DHL had no delivery address (4tf?) so I gave it to them.
  6. 07-Nov-2006: DHL delivered my computer in the late afternoon.

What they did:

655-1112A DA TOSHIBA PLUTO 4200RPM 60GB HD KA201B
632-0282  FLX CKT ASSY,HDD,PB15"

What I did:

  1. Eagerly pressed the start button and crossed fingers and toes. Grey screen. Spinning gear. So far so good. And hmpf, the spinning gear stopped spinning 🙁
  2. Quickly checked again the documents that were in the box, found nothing suspicious, cringed when reading “We’re pleased we could repair your Apple product.”
  3. Called 800-APL-CARE
  4. Gave the woman on the phone all the case numbers I’ve been given since 18 October, the computer serial number, my name, the 2 repair references (dispatch numbers). She couldn’t find *any* history. This computer suddenly didn’t exist anymore. The case numbers were not in the system. That was insane. I was looking at the numerous notes I had taken over the last few weeks and I was thinking “there’s no way this happened only in my mind. I’m not “that” crazy”.
  5. She said that since the computer had been purchased in France I needed to call the French Apple Care hotline. I told her there was no way I was calling any other number but the one I had been calling for the past *three* weeks.
  6. Amy appeared in my office, I put the phone on speaker phone.
  7. Amy scribbled on a napkin something like “request to speak to a superior”, which I did.
  8. The woman put me on hold for a little bit, then asked me the office address, then typed like mad and said nothing till she put me through to a “product specialist”
  9. The product specialist made me repair the (brand new) disk (no repair needed), then made me boot the Precious in safe mode. We tested the airport card. Then the video card. All seemed to be worky.
  10. He then mentioned that the current situation seemed to be similar to last week’s. I asked him how he knew that and he said it was in the system. I said “oh, you found a history for this computer, eventually”.
  11. Then he made me restart. Woohoo! Precious restarted! They had installed Tiger. I created a user account. Then we restarted again. All good.
  12. He said he couldn’t explain what had been the issue and that he hoped it wouldn’t occur again. He said that if it occurs again, I should boot in safe mode and restart. He gave me a 3rd case number. He also gave me his e-mail address and he gave me his phone extension and explained how to contact him directly by phone.
  13. I put the Precious to sleep and prayed it would wake up.
  14. Once at home, it didn’t wake up 🙁
  15. And after I turned it off, I got the now familiar kernel panic window.
  16. I restarted in safe mode and tried to restart normally. More kernel panic window.
  17. I e-mailed Edward, the Powerbook product specialist.

He replied today and instructed me to start in safe mode, open the “Untitled” disk, go in the Library, find the Preferences folder and drag onto the desktop the folder named “SystemConfiguration”, and then, restart. He added to let him know if that worked so he could advise of the next steps. He finished with “If that doesn’t work, let me know anyway.”.

That didn’t work. After restarting I soon got the kernel panic screen. Edward will call me at the office tomorrow afternoon.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, Precious, my powerbook G4 is still borken…

Apple sent me a box to send it for repair and the next week it was in a worse state. This is mysterious, really. They changed the main logic board as well and the hard drive (and also the top case and they exchanged the battery). It doesn’t make sens that it wouldn’t boot at all.

More conversation with 800-APL-CARE and I was instructed to install an OS. Well, duh. There was one, said the installer. Anyway, I erased and installed, and did the software updates. The next step was to bring my backup on Precious. That was a mission for later at home, where my backup was. So I put the Precious to sleep.

And once at home, Precious didn’t wake from sleep.

More 800-APL-CARE action. I got to speak with a nice guy named Tim. We proceeded to some basic key-combo tests and as all of these failed, he instructed me to remove the apple-branded RAM and place my non-apple-branded one. No better. Precious wouldn’t boot. Tim made an appointment for me at the Genius Bar of the Cambridgeside Apple Store and gave me his e-mail address. I was to e-mail him if the genius couldn’t fix my computer.

There was nothing the genius could do. I was at the Genius Bar for more than an hour, repeatedly spacing out and thinking about the work I wasn’t doing, the frustration that my Precious was in such a bad state, the satisfaction that I purchased a replacement computer.

The genius decided to check-in Precious again for repair. I left the apple store and went on e-mailing Tim. He replied saying he’d call the genius, find out what he thinks the issue is, and get back to me with alternatives. I haven’t heard from him since.

Borat Sagdiyev takes America

[This post originally appeared in Dullicious, where I blogged as Barbie-dull for several years.]

The Metro newspaper of yesterday had an hilarious bit about “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”, which made me laugh out loud in the train. Musings of Borat on the country he got to know:

On the fast food nation

I would like say that I like US and A very much, enjoy your peoples, and enjoy your delicious foods. First I here, I go to a restaurant named McDonald’s which is so fancy-pants, it actually have separate room for making toilet in. There I eat 17 hamburgers and 600 packets of red soup called ketchups. These did not agree so much with my stomach, and the next day my anus was hung loose like the mouth of a tired dog.

On W

Kazakhstan very much admires your mighty warlord, George Walter Bush. He is a very wise man, and a very strong man, but perhaps not as strong as his father, Barbara. There are small differences between our system of politic. In Kazakh elections, for example, the winner is not the man with the most votes, but the candidate who can carry a woman against her will for the furthest distance. Our present leader can manage 4.3 miles. How long can Premier Bush?

On women’s rights

There is no womens in Kazakh film industry. We say, ‘To give a woman a camera is like to give a monkey a gun.’ We have stopped doing that ever since the 2003 Almati Zoo massacre.