Rocking in Hakata

Not even funny. You’ve got to be kidding me. Seriously. No, really seriously. I’ve had my computer back for a few weeks. It’s dead again. Same issue. Same flashing file folder. Same dead machine. I’m so angry with Apple right now I could scream. I think I will, actually. AAAAAAAAAaaaAAAAaGH!

On July 25th, I issued an RIH Red Alert, due to the sudden inability to post from home. By the 26th, I’d spoken to the Applecare people and scheduled a delivery guy to come haul my computer off to Apple’s facility somewhere over on Honshu, so I gave you a Mac Update. After a whole lot of hassle, a new 750 GB hard drive and single replacement stick of memory, I got stabilized again and started using my 10.5-month old Mac to post from home again. One of the first things I posted was about Applecare in Rural Japan. I guess I get to do that all over again.

What really infuriates me is that I just sent “I’m not dead, just got sorted again” emails to a lot of online contacts. I’ve been made a liar, apparently. And I just finished installing my programs yesterday because I waited until I felt like it was “safe.” HA. Well, learned that lesson too, I suppose. AND I just finished RE-EDITING the HUGE video that I was putting together on Japanese language use in the show Heroes. I even promised to release it this weekend. Guess that’s out too. I can’t believe it. I’m going to be lucky to get that thing re-re-edited and published before the 2nd season premieres, for crying out loud. At this rate, who knows. I am so angry. I think that’s understandable. Apple, I paid you a huge sum of money for a computer that worked, and paid extra to insure that it would be fixed if there were ever a problem. Having my computer shipped off for weeks really removes a lot of the value for me. You’ve got a really bad track record right now. I’m disappointed. I love you when you work, but when you fail to deliver, I am not willing to excuse you just because I like your products. GET ON THE BALL.

The delivery guy comes on Friday. My computer may or may not come home by Friday next. (That’s the 14th, for those who are confused.) And there’s no guarantee that it won’t remain an uber-expensive paper weight. Until then, I apologize for fewer, text-only, slightly boring entries. Ugh.

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

So, I thought I’d post a quick description / follow-up to my problems with my iMac. I called in to tech service and they told me that I definitely needed to send it into repair. Sigh. So, I scheduled a pickup. The day that the man came to pick up my iMac was coincidentally the same day I was invited to go to the Nametoko Camp. In the end, instead of waiting for the week of zero connection with the outside world to end at my apartment, I had a blast at camp instead. Good timing! Anyway, thanks to both my paranoia and the ability to call the delivery people and schedule things, I documented the departure and return of my iMac. When it came back to me, a week after it left, it contained a new 750 GB hard drive (since the old one died, as I suspected) as well as a new 1 GB stick of memory – fixing a problem I didn’t know I had. So now I’m back at my 3 GB original setup. Yay! Anyhoo – here’s the second delivery guy (from the last 2 pictures) pulling in and getting my iMac out of the truck. Ha ha. Overall, the timing sucks, but I’m pleased with the way it went. Thanks Apple. Now just keep your standards higher so that people don’t have to go through this hassle. Sheesh.

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Media, Photos, Unsolicited Commentary, Video

So…you know how IT support is probably the single most frustrating experience ever? Well, second language IT support is just like that, only worse. It’s frustration on steroids. Whether it be in my second language (Japanese) or in the agent’s second language (English), we all want to strangle someone when we’re done. Sigh. The problem is that tech support requires a specialized vocabulary that I’ve simply not picked up. I have it in English, as well as the knowledge, but not the Japanese to correspond with it. I wind up getting asked the newbie questions like “did you turn the computer on?” and “is the keyboard connected?” and I feel…well, down about it. Then, the reverse situation on the English language line, where my comprehension is sooo far above the agent helping me that I can literally hear him sweat. Poor guy. Many of you get the unnecessary “I see” or “OK” or similar soundbyte in a conversation where it’s clear that the opposite is true. Do that over the phone about a technical problem. Bring your own weapons. Sheesh.

Anyway, the update today is that my lovely 24-inch, 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, 256 MB nVidia VRAM, 3 GB Memory, 750 GB HDD iMac is going to be doing some traveling without me. Due to monetary concerns and scheduling problems, I opted to have the thing shipped. Because I live in “the pretty sticks,” dubbed so by Seth because it’s the middle of nowhere – but gorgeous, it will take them until Saturday to get a guy out to me. That fellow will not speak English, but I’m not really worried about that. He’ll collect the computer itself – not the keyboard, mouse, power cord, or any peripherals. Cool by me. He’ll box it and ship it back to Apple somewhere. They’ll tinker with it and most likely swap out the hard drive for a new one. Then they’ll ship it back after freshly installing OS X again – whether they’ll take it all the way to 10.4.10 again, or merely restore it to its original 10.4.7 state remains to be seen. They say it normally takes about one week. Adjusting for life on my island, who knows what that means. I hope it’s a legitimate estimate – Japan’s not a huge country geographically speaking, after all.

This talk brings me to one of my pet peeves with computer stuff. I could care less about the physical drive that they’re collecting. I care about the data on that drive. I am concerned, like most knowledgeable consumers are, about the possibility of identity theft. I use my computer as an international financial institution of sorts – making transfers, paying loans, buying things from the other side of the world, etc. Therefore, it contains credit information, account information, and loads more about my digital monetary life. I want that protected. Most people in internet forums seem to think that people get angry when a company replaces their hard drive because they lose data. That’s probably true with some – who haven’t properly backed up – a lesson I learned last time. But with folks like me, I am more concerned with what happens after my hard drive is erased. Is the old one destroyed? It better be. I WANT MY OLD DRIVE DESTROYED. If I had my way, it’d be zeroed out, wiped magnetically 10 times, and then dismantled so the platters could be shattered. I’d feel comfortable with that. But at this time, it seems like that’s not really a concern on most of the companies’ parts. Uncool. I guess I just have to trust Apple…a feat that is becoming increasingly difficult for me… Oh well, here’s hoping all turns out well.

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a little while know that I encountered some technical problems with my less-than-a-year-old 24-inch iMac. Last time it was due to some software problems and I was able to fix it. This time it looks far more serious. This time my hard drive has died. My computer cannot boot into Mac OS X or Windows. I can’t simply reinstall Mac OS X (the worst case scenario in the last bout with the computer), because it cannot find the hard drive on which to freshly install. Can’t diagnose it either. All I get is a sad little folder with a question mark on it, and then it boots into my install disc. I’m not squeamish about playing with computer’s internal workings – but it isn’t a real option this time. The iMac is not really user-serviceable. Plus, it’s under extended warranty that I risk voiding by attempting the fix myself. Therefore, my computer is useless at present. Please be patient with me as I try to get it fixed. I cannot explain to you how frustrating this is. I will likely have to go find an Apple Certified Technician…but I live in a fishing village on an island in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea. ‘Nuff said. I’m sorry, guys. Ugh. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long, eh? (On the flip side, I’ll be able to blog about second language tech support afterward…and that sounds even hairier than the normal kind…)

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

Disaster has been avoided. I am writing this from my iMac. Can’t tell you how relieved I am. And before you ask, backups are already in progress. Lesson learned.

Now I too can join the “I Survived the Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4.10″ club. All the thanks and credit goes to Igor Minar (who passes credit to Mike Brooks). You guys saved my butt big time. For those who want to duplicate the fix, here’s what I did, following Igor’s instructions.

1 – Download a chip architecture appropriate copy of the DMG for the standalone combination update for 10.4.10 from Apple. (Intel / Power PC) Put it on a USB key (if you use PPC, make sure you have a properly formatted key, otherwise, you’re all set). Plug said USB key into your Mac and proceed to step 2.

2 – Boot from your Mac OS X Installation Disc. (NOT an update disc.) Choose which language you’d like to use, but once the menu bar at the top appears, don’t do anything else with the installer. Choose Utilities, then Disk Utility. Repair the disk permissions and the disk if necessary and even if it’s just “voodoo.” Close Disk Utility.

3 – Copy the DMG from the USB key to your computer’s hard drive. (I’m using the Intel DMG, since that’s what I really used. PPC people just change the name.) Go to the Utilities menu, and choose Terminal this time. Enter the code below and hit enter after each line.

cp “/Volumes/USBKEYNAME/MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.10Intel.dmg” \
“/Volumes/YOURMACHDD/”

4 – Mount the DMG file. Hit enter after each line.

hdiutil attach \
“/Volumes/YOURMACHDD/MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.10Intel.dmg”

5 – Run the update. Hit enter after each line (4 times total).

“/Volumes/YOURMACHDD/usr/bin/open” \
/Applications/Utilities/Installer.app \
“/Volumes/Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combined Update (Intel)/\
MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.10Intel.pkg”

6 – Follow the instructions on the GUI that popped up, restart when prompted, reclaim your machine, and THANK IGOR and the others who got this fix out there!

Whew. Glad that’s over. Now for laundry and apartment cleaning. Fun. (Actually, relatively speaking, yeah…it is.)

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

RED ALERT. My iMac won’t boot, thanks to the 10.4.10 update to Mac OS X. I’m frantically trying to solve the problem by mimicking people who successfully finagled their way out of the same issue during the 10.4.9 update. The most helpful things I’ve found are Igor Minar’s posts and this article from Unsanity. All I have to say on the subject is that updating my Windows machines never killed them. Generally speaking that happened before I updated them or after, but not as a direct result of the update. Darn you, Apple. Darn you to heck.

For those of you wondering – yes, I am a bit too calm about this. Probably because I realize that 3 years worth of my life is stored in digital form on this computer. Photos, projects, papers, music, programs, everything. I don’t want to erase myself and start over, which is the conventional wisdom (or at least the conventional tech support wisdom) for these situations. I want to save my own butt. And to do that, I gotta be calm. Pray for me. I just might lose it if things go south. But I’ll lose it calmly. Ha ha.

Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary