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'Bay Area Bites' is part of KQED's Blog Authors Collaborative. Blog contributors and commentators are solely responsible for their content. If you're interested in writing or contributing to a blog on kqed.org, email us with your idea.
'Bay Area Bites' is part of KQED's Blog Authors Collaborative. Blog contributors and commentators are solely responsible for their content. If you're interested in writing or contributing to a blog on kqed.org, email us with your idea.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Local S%*!t Happens
My computer curse strikes again! A few weeks ago, I come back from a perfectly lovely dinner in Half Moon Bay, all full of good food and bonhomie and oh-so-ready to write a Bay Area Bites column about some rockin' Rancho Gordo Borlotti beans...when my iBook decides to throw a tantrum.And now that the vein in my head has stopped jumping around in a thoroughly alarming manner, I can sit down and write about it.
I had a slight fantasy about putting a well-inked pen to clean white paper and composing long epistles about the glory of returning to the lost art of longhand-composed columns and pieces, but the unfamiliar sight of my own scrabbly handwriting scared me into a corner for a few hours where I also attempted to uncramp my confused fingers.
The good thing about having a computer crisis in the Bay Area is that I could think of at least four people we could call for technical advice, and not one of them was CrAppleCare. NOT ONE! After brokenly calling my Bay Area Bites editor and leaving several tortured messages about my predicament, I called Amy to let her know I would be physically and mentally unable to make our appointment. Amy made sympathetic noises in my direction and suggested I give her incomparable husband, Lee, a call and pick his brain. I did, and The Incomparable Lee said calmly, "Okay, first thing is: Don't panic." Having just dragged myself through a sleepless night where I was up every two hours, checking on how my disk utility was coming and creeling, "The O.C.!" and "Grey's Anatomy!" to myself, I didn't have the heart or sense of humor to ask The Incomparable Lee if a towel would be of any good use in this situation. The Incomparable Lee talked me through the problem, provided much sound advice and information, and really helped to assuage my stomach-twisting fears that I had lost nine months of unbacked-up data.
So, after all that, I ended up stress food shopping at Albertsons when my sole intention had been to pick up a prescription and some cotton balls.
Here's some news for a few of you out there: Cheetos aren't local. And when it comes right down to it, neither are caramel-filled Hershey Kisses. But both are damn tasty in almost every situation and they come off especially tasty when contemplating missed deadlines, unrecoverable photographs, and nine months of deleted work.
So, I'm sorry Eat Local. I'm still trying.
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6 Comments:
jesus, you sound whiny. you don't back up any of your data for nine months, then, when you lose it all you expect AppleCare to rush over and fix it for you, and if they don't then they're "CrAppleCare"??? wow. a computer is a tool. learn to use it properly and stop whining.
5/18/2006 10:52 AM
I didn't get whiny I got someone able to make light of a trying situation. I love the term "stress food shopping". I know I'm doing that when I come home with bags and bags of groceries yet without the one thing I went shopping for in the first place...
5/18/2006 6:08 PM
We should all have an Incomparable Lee in our lives.
Do you remember the Sex and the City where Carrie loses everything on her laptop and everyone asks her if she backed up? That's what you remind me of.
And isn't it amazing that Cheetos are local to nowhere???
(I'm going to go backup now ;) )
5/18/2006 6:42 PM
Thanks, Amy.
Anonymous, if you had followed my links you would have found why I call them CrApple Care. My problems with that company are long and extensive. They've removed my RAM, lost my AirPort Card, and given me faulty computers. By the way? I didn't lose all my data in the end and I never expected AppleCare to recover it. I knew that was my fault, but thanks for the awesome feedback -- you made my day!
5/18/2006 7:51 PM
So Nu?
What is the very best way to "back-up"?
Maybe we should have tea and back up together?
I have a fondness for Apple myself, but just because hey were the first mega corporation I worked for and I had such an amazing experience. Like we got breaks an were allowed to sit down for lunch and appreciated when we did a good job.
But I am so very glad you are back and that there is a Lee out there hopefully for us all! heart, me.
5/18/2006 9:33 PM
I liked Apple just fine, in fact, I adored them. But then they sent me back "fixed" laptops with cracked monitors, ruined AirPort cards, missing extra RAM, perpetually faulty logic boards...I got as wary of them as I am about every big corporation. I still buy their stuff, I still love their computers above everyone else's, but the scales have fallen from my eyes now.
Normally, my husband does the backing up for both of us but with a death in the family, the last nine months haven't been exactly...easy.
5/19/2006 11:28 AM
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