Oh No, Not Again
So it was actually a pretty good weekend, until Saturday night.
Saturday I slept in, and around 11:30 got a phone call proving that I truly have a full-service comic book shop. The owner of the shop (Bruce) called to say he'd just bought a bunch of Marvel Masterworks hardcovers from another customer, and asked if there were any I wanted. Well, there were three I wanted - two Fantastic Fours and a Spider-Man, so I went over in the afternoon and picked them up. 1960s Marvel Comics are charming, albeit not great literature. But these old books are kind of fun to have.
I spent the afternoon watching my Babylon 5 tapes, with only a break to go to the comics shop and to check my e-mail. Oh, and I went to the cat food store and bought some (what else?) cat food. And some cat toys which have been hugely successful, sending both cats flying several feet in the air in pursuit.
In the evening, Epic had its annual dinner, and I went. I had made sure ahead of time that I didn't need to dress up (I hate dressing up; have I mentioned that I hate dressing up? Hate, hate, hate. And hate, can't forget about hate), which ensured that I was pretty much the only one there wearing jeans. It consisted of decent food, and my team mostly hung out at the same table. And I got an award, which is pretty cool. I think I get awards mainly by virtue of being a long-standing employee who therefore gets put on a bunch of tough and/or important projects.
Then I went home, turned on my computer, and...
WHIRRRRRRRR...
The thing didn't boot up. In fact, it was exhibiting almost the exact same symptoms it did last time, with the disk whirring away but nothing happening. Since I've replaced the disk since then, this leads me to believe that the disk wasn't the real problem. I've heard that Power Computing machines have had power supply problems, so maybe that's the problem. I dunno, but I guess I'll have to find out.
And, of course, Sunday was backup day, so I may have lost everything I'd done during the previous week, including a bunch of preparation for our fantasy baseball draft. Aaargh!
So, I'm going to see if I can recover anything from the disk (or even get it working again permanently by reformatting it), and try to see if I can get it covered by warranty (I'll try harder than last time). In the meantime, I'm probably going to buy myself a better Mac Powerbook to tide me over in the interim.
But I must admit it's tempting to just chuck this machine and buy myself a G3 Mac. I feel like I'm being punished for not buying true Apple hardware.
Monday I finished reading Stephen Dedman's novel The Art of Arrow Cutting, which is a charming contemporary fantasy novel, although a little lightweight, plot-wise. We're discussing it in our book discussion on Thursday. I also went to dinner with Karen, which was fun. We went to The Wild Iris Cafe, which used to be my favorite restaurant in town, but is now pricy and not as good as it once was. But I still like to go once in a while.
Work has been pretty good. This week I've been heads-down in programming this one project, and have rarely come up for air. It's a nice feeling, focusing that much, but it does ensure that I'm pretty tired at the end of the day. C'est la vie!
At least I feel like I'm facing this crash better than I did the last one. And if I do have to buy a new machine, at least I can afford to do so - even if I don't particularly like the idea.
|
|
|
|
