Friday, July 08, 2011

Legos, Deaths, and LOTR

When I was younger Dad and I played with Legos. And part of playing with Lego sets involves learning to follow assembly directions.

This skill is useful later in life, when, say, replacing a hard drive in your laptop. Which is what I did last week. My giant 250GB drive just wasn't as giant as it used to be, so I bought a 750GB replacement and found the ifixit.com take-apart guide for my computer. After re-assembly, the computer booted fine, but my fans were running continuously. Huh. That's not good. I think I broke something.

Googled, eventually brought my computer to First Tech, and Apple, and back to First Tech. Went home, tried reseating cables and sensors and stuff, still no-go. So Saturday morning I trucked over to FT again (4th time in two days); I know some of the techs from all the times I've brought machines in from work, and when I told them my story the night before one of them offered to check out the machine with me for free, if I couldn't fix it at home that night. That was a $60 diagnosis fee I didn't have to pay. And he also replaced one of my keys that had been smudged. It's the little things in life that can lift your day.

Long story short, he advised me to take Apple's offer and send my computer to Apple's repair depot, a $310 flat fee, and they fix everything. If FT were to do the repairs, parts alone were close to $1000 (because one of the hosed sensors was on the logic board).

Using the Apple Store app on my phone I made another Genius Bar appointment and meandered to the store. They took my machine, and from the sounds of it the repair depot is going to replace the logic board, another broken heat sensor, and the case. This is huge. A couple years ago my laptop took a tumble and got slightly dented; not terrible, but it's not pristine. I never looked into getting it fixed because the last time I tried (6 years ago with my first PowerBook) it was a $600 fix. Apparently Apple's policies have changed, and I might be getting back a sparkling, almost-new computer.

In the meantime I'm using a school machine and have my HD in an external enclosure. It's not ideal, but it works.




There's been too much death in my life recently, all within the last week:

- former teacher's wife, cancer
- friend's brother, killed in Afghanistan
- neighbor, cancer
- friend's mother, cancer

I have no particular thoughts on this, just felt a need to mention them.




In other news, this week my friend Jessie came over a couple nights and we watched the first two LOTR movies (compliments of Dadflix). I've never seen the second LOTR movie, at least not in full, so now I've officially been cultured (the third movie I've seen, at least in parts, a few times). It helped having someone to explain what was going on, too, since I've never read the books.

Lastly, yesterday I finally signed up for Netflix. I've been putting it off for a year, and it was finally time to take the plunge.

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