Monday, March 06, 2006
Shitty weekend....
My plan this weekend was to finish my book review of "Night" for But You Don't Look Sick on Saturday and send it in. I was also gonna balance the checkbook and download some tunes. Then today, I was gonna kick back and watch the Academy Awards and then make a nice blog entry about it. But it was not to be.....
Dan woke me up on Saturday and asked me what happened to the computer. I was 99 percent asleep and had no idea what he was talking about. He said he wasn't getting any of the usual icons on the screen. So I lurched out of bed and switched on the computer. It wouldn't even boot up. Got a black screen with a login prompt, but I couldn't type anything. In the four years we've had this machine, this has never happened. I tried a million different ways to reboot, rebuild, to get SOMETHING to happen. Nada.
So I had to call Apple. They charge $50 bucks for a service call!! But we managed to get the machine up and running with the operating system disk. I was told to back up everything I could, then try a utility disk repair. So I spent my Saturday backing things up the best I could. But I couldn't get it to do a repair. By the time I gave up, it was quite late, so I went to bed.
Was supposed to go to a union meeting today, but I'm still in exhaustion mode, so I couldn't get out of bed for it. Finally came to life about 2pm. Went back to the computer, which still wasn't booting up properly, and did the utility disk repair on the hard drive. Turns out the hard drive was fine. So I tried to do an "archive and install" on the operating system. That's when it would crash. Had to call Apple again (luckily that $50 fee is good for five days). They told me that the only way I could re-install my operating system was to do an "erase and install". Yep, that means EVERYTHING goes bye bye except the applications that come with OSX!
So four years' worth of customizing our computer is gone. My iTunes is empty. Nothing in my address book. Dan's e-mail address no longer there. Lost two internet browsers (only have Safari now, which I hate). And I'm too brain-fogged to even want to do what it takes to update all this shit. It will literally take months. I do have four discs of material I backed up yesterday, but I'll have to re-install all kinds of software.
I think I know what went wrong. I still have dial up. That was fine until about six months ago, when the upgrades for my software got so large that I would lose the connection before it finished downloading. I never was able to upgrade my operating system, but the upgrades for some of the applications were smaller, so I continued to do that. I think I inadvertantly upgraded an application that only works with the latest upgrade of OSX, and it caused OSX to crash.
So if I'm going to be able to continue using this computer, I'm going to have to get something more reliable than dialup so I can keep the operating system up to date. Thing is, I've been on Earthlink's waiting list for DSL for FOUR YEARS! It is STILL not available in my neighborhood. I checked with the local phone company, which uses MSN Premium. Guess what? Not Mac compatible. I have the system requirements for their "lesser" DSL, but I can't get their site to tell me whether or not it's available in my neighborhood. You'd think I lived on a remote island or on the Alaskan tundra or something. I live in a MAJOR metropolitan area!!
I did watch the Academy Awards, but I was so distracted about what I was gonna do about the computer that I didn't relax and enjoy it. Instead, I was fretting about having lost four years of financial data from Quicken (I can't find it on my discs) and how much work it would take to reconcile the checkbook to a fresh version of Quicken. And where exactly my e-mail addresses might be hiding. I did finish my book review and luckily had the e-mail addy to sent it to, so the weekend was not 100 percent a waste. Just 80 percent.
So if there are no entries here for awhile, it's because I'm trying to round up new internet service and find the material I'd gathered for my Raves of the Day.
In the meantime, if anyone has info on DSL that is Mac compatible, please leave a comment or e-mail it to me so that I can put you back in my address book. My e-mail address should be good until I get this figured out, after which I will update here.
End of whine, for now.
Dan woke me up on Saturday and asked me what happened to the computer. I was 99 percent asleep and had no idea what he was talking about. He said he wasn't getting any of the usual icons on the screen. So I lurched out of bed and switched on the computer. It wouldn't even boot up. Got a black screen with a login prompt, but I couldn't type anything. In the four years we've had this machine, this has never happened. I tried a million different ways to reboot, rebuild, to get SOMETHING to happen. Nada.
So I had to call Apple. They charge $50 bucks for a service call!! But we managed to get the machine up and running with the operating system disk. I was told to back up everything I could, then try a utility disk repair. So I spent my Saturday backing things up the best I could. But I couldn't get it to do a repair. By the time I gave up, it was quite late, so I went to bed.
Was supposed to go to a union meeting today, but I'm still in exhaustion mode, so I couldn't get out of bed for it. Finally came to life about 2pm. Went back to the computer, which still wasn't booting up properly, and did the utility disk repair on the hard drive. Turns out the hard drive was fine. So I tried to do an "archive and install" on the operating system. That's when it would crash. Had to call Apple again (luckily that $50 fee is good for five days). They told me that the only way I could re-install my operating system was to do an "erase and install". Yep, that means EVERYTHING goes bye bye except the applications that come with OSX!
So four years' worth of customizing our computer is gone. My iTunes is empty. Nothing in my address book. Dan's e-mail address no longer there. Lost two internet browsers (only have Safari now, which I hate). And I'm too brain-fogged to even want to do what it takes to update all this shit. It will literally take months. I do have four discs of material I backed up yesterday, but I'll have to re-install all kinds of software.
I think I know what went wrong. I still have dial up. That was fine until about six months ago, when the upgrades for my software got so large that I would lose the connection before it finished downloading. I never was able to upgrade my operating system, but the upgrades for some of the applications were smaller, so I continued to do that. I think I inadvertantly upgraded an application that only works with the latest upgrade of OSX, and it caused OSX to crash.
So if I'm going to be able to continue using this computer, I'm going to have to get something more reliable than dialup so I can keep the operating system up to date. Thing is, I've been on Earthlink's waiting list for DSL for FOUR YEARS! It is STILL not available in my neighborhood. I checked with the local phone company, which uses MSN Premium. Guess what? Not Mac compatible. I have the system requirements for their "lesser" DSL, but I can't get their site to tell me whether or not it's available in my neighborhood. You'd think I lived on a remote island or on the Alaskan tundra or something. I live in a MAJOR metropolitan area!!
I did watch the Academy Awards, but I was so distracted about what I was gonna do about the computer that I didn't relax and enjoy it. Instead, I was fretting about having lost four years of financial data from Quicken (I can't find it on my discs) and how much work it would take to reconcile the checkbook to a fresh version of Quicken. And where exactly my e-mail addresses might be hiding. I did finish my book review and luckily had the e-mail addy to sent it to, so the weekend was not 100 percent a waste. Just 80 percent.
So if there are no entries here for awhile, it's because I'm trying to round up new internet service and find the material I'd gathered for my Raves of the Day.
In the meantime, if anyone has info on DSL that is Mac compatible, please leave a comment or e-mail it to me so that I can put you back in my address book. My e-mail address should be good until I get this figured out, after which I will update here.
End of whine, for now.
Comments:
this could be a stupid question, but does your local cable company provide broadband access? Here in KS, Cox is all over the broadband thing, along with SBC (or, AT&T now, I guess they're called).
Robert H.
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Robert H.
# posted by 
: 11:01 PM
: 11:01 PM