Good-bye, Old Friend

Jan 30, 2009 07:21 AM Filed in: Day To Day
Hello, All, and a belated Happy New Year to you! January almost slipped by without a comment here, but it looks like I'm gonna sneak a post in just under the wire. LOL! We had a bit of unexpected excitement just after Christmas. My trusty old Apple Titanium Powerbook (that's 'TiBook' in Apple speak, but 'Pi (Pirate!) Book' to all who knew him) suddenly and most unexpectedly kicked the bucket. He was nearly 7 years old which in computer years is like, Ancient, and in truth he lived a very full and adventurous life, but I really, really hated to see him go.
He was a good friend and great partner in crime. (SmileyPirate LOL!) But all good things must come to an end, and so did he, finally.
apple_3
Now as many of you will know, sudden hard drive crashes can really ruin your day. Oi. Or your week even. Do I hear month? Yes, month even, and that's almost what it came to here. I took PiBook into the shop, and the first diagnosis was hard drive failure, but then they discovered some logic board issues, and next thing I know we're looking at some whopping sized $'s to do the repair, and so just like that it was time to let him go to Mac Heaven. But with all the back and forth, extra diagnostic time, and the soul searching that went with weighing Cost and Benefit, the weeks slipped by, and by the time I finally ordered my shiny new MacBook Pro from Apple and had it delivered we were well past the three week mark of living a Mac-less life. *shudder*

Luckily though I had some great backups on my external hard drive, and that along with what the techies could salvage from the crashed drive allowed me to make a nearly complete recovery in a matter of a couple of days once I had my new Mac. Very cool. In fact, the only thing I lost in this whole crazy mess is all the birthdays entries from my address book. I restored all the address book entries themselves from my iPod, but apparently iPods don't load complete snapshots of address book records, just the basics. So, no birthdays. D'oh! Consider this an early and blanket excuse if any of you regulars out there don't get a birthday note from me this year. It may take me a while to re-enter all of those dates.
AppleGuyDance
Anyways, that's my excuse in general for the disappearing act I've pulled this first month of the new year. But now I have a trusty Mac Companion yet again, and though we're still getting used to each other, I'm already tickled to death with him. I think we're going to become great friends. And that's about it on the news front. We did get a most excellent ice storm down here this week, but I think I'll save some of that for a later post. For now, it just feels good to be back in the saddle and messing around online.   Cheers! JB