Category: Work

All is well that ends well


All is well that ends well.
Or rather, so far so good.

I picked up the newspaper this morning for the T ride and next to the sudoku game is the horoscope. Here’s what I read:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Lady Luck is working on your behalf in repayment of your latest efforts.

And I told Amy,

“Amy! DHL are to deliver the Precious back to me today. That horoscope means the Precious will be fixed for good, now!”

She said something like,

“yes, dear, yes…”

and she nodded and smiled (gracious and kind friend I have here!). So I added,

“it’s written in the newspaper and it’s the truth. You’ll see.”

I’m making that up because I don’t remember what we said. There was a lot of joking around this. Anyway. DHL just delivered the Precious and it boots!

It has a spanking new logic board (I haven’t seen it for myself, mind you) and they removed a bad part (non-apple-branded RAM that my sysadmin purchased and installed a long while ago, and that they didn’t return).

I don’t believe in horoscopes, by the way.
Why? Simply because the odds that DHL delivered my Precious to all the Leos of the world are pretty pretty slim.

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.

Phoenix felicitas

I had been considering getting a personal MacBook Pro since last June. I made up my mind and purchased it yesterday.

Last June I took the opportunity of being on vacation and sent the Precious to be repaired. They had agreed to replace the DVD drive which has stopped working some time last December. The new MacBook Pros had been out for a little while and the mac people were taking a really long while to repair my computer. I chatted with the technician who was really happy with his 13″ MacBook, but he kind of dissuaded me, saying it would really be expensive if I wanted a MacBook Pro that had a similar configuration as my PowerBook G4.

But yesterday, I reconsidered it. It seemed just like the right thing to do, on several accounts. I had chosen a pretty good configuration (non-glossy 15″, 2.16 GHz, 1 GB RAM, with a 100 GB HD) and the Cambridgeside Galleria Apple Store had it in stock. Oh I get by with a little help from my friends. H^H^H^H^ With a little help from my friend, I got to buy it (dino++). How exciting! Mine!.

A few nights ago, I was entertaining myself with threatening Precious to get a new computer that I would name Precious, and that Precious would not exist anymore. Precious still goes in kernel panic mode after being restarted each time it fails to wake up from sleep (i.e. every time, unless it’s completely off for a long time).

Anyway, I got this new computer and it didn’t feel right to name it Precious. I considered a few names:

  • Tool (because it’s *the* tool)
  • Thing (’cause it’s a thing)
  • Mine (all mine!)
  • PreciousToo (or MorePrecious, or PreciousTwo)
  • Ni (“two” in japanse, it also amused me to think of certain Knights)
  • Felis-Felicitas (the HP happy potion –Amy suggested this– amy++)

Right now it’s called Phoenix. Because it’s grey. Which made me think of Jean Grey who is Phoenix in the XMen comics. I like it but it sounds obviously too serious, not at all the same spirit as the names in the list above. It will do, for now.