Insert Big Sigh Here

[przed]

Work is busy (I'm now officially fully booked up till the end of 2010) but sort of manageable, the film fest is over, and the festering pit that is our house is gradually coming under control. I had grand plans to get back to some regular vidding and writing.

So what happens? My nice, shiny, new-ish Mac decides to pack it in.

It had been a bit glitchy the last couple of weeks (it would randomly throw up a blue screen for a second every once in a while) and I was going to run some diagnostics on it this week to see if it was the video card or the monitor. But it seems the latest Apple security update was too much for it and it just started freezing every time I booted.

And then when I tried booting it from the install disk, there was that ozone-y, burn-y smell.

At least the call to Apple's help line was reasonably painless. Seems like telling them that something inside your machine probably caught fire is a ticket to immediately getting them to approve a visit to a service centre without an hour of "Have you tried this?" questions. It also got me the liability control "Were you injured? Was your property damaged?" treatment, but I can live with that.

I've just got my fingers crossed that the repair is easier than the last time I had a Mac go bad on me. That was six months of yelling at Apple until they finally agreed my non-functioning Mac was a lemon and gave me a new one.

Comments

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Well that stinks. I wonder if it's something in the ionosphere as a bunch of mates computers have gone belly up recently... or perhaps it just couldn't stand the strain any longer of all the hot man smut... Just a thought, you should mention it at the service centre. *whistles*

[przed.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's it. It was the hot man smut. I'll be sure to tell the nice computer tech guys to watch out for that. *g*

(It's actually bad enough that one of my vidding drives is called "DVD Rips." That got me a raised eyebrow the last time I got my old machine fixed.)

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Who knows, they might appreciate it. *g*

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh! I was just thinking about you. I've been a lousy correspondent, for which I apologize. However, I knew you were busy too (with the matters listed above). I hadn't known about your Mac, though! Sheesh! As someone who has gone through three computers in three years, I sympathize (curse you, vid rendering!). Let's hope you get your 'puter problems rectified in short order. Let us know how it goes.

[ancastar.livejournal.com]

Argh...

That Anonymous comment was me.

Must drink more coffee...

[przed.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to email you too. I miss our regular email chats. But yeah, things are nutty and continue to be so.

Three computers in three years! I hope to heck I don't have to go through that. Especially since this puppy was a whacking five grand. (That was a hit on the savings, but I'm hoping to get at least five years out of it.) At least it's got a three year warranty on it. Everything but the 8 GB of memory anyway.

I do wish that I wasn't the one who had to always get the buggy computer. My last Mac nearly killed me. And Don. I was without computer for most of 6 months while they tried to fix every single part of it under the sun, and I absconded with his computer for great swaths of time in that period. Neither of us enjoyed that much. At least now I've got a work computer to fall back on for email and writing. And if I get desparate to vid I can always load up his machine with my video software since work got a professional editing package for me.

[ancastar.livejournal.com]

Really the only computer that was a waste of cash was my HP desktop. The HP laptop lasted two years, but I burned that out with video rendering. I bought a desktop that lasted almost exactly one year to the day. Now I have a Dell desktop. So far so good on that front (knocks on wooden head). I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yay to your work machine and professional editing package. Still--who wants to stay at work any longer than you have to? You have your little family to come home to. How does creative stuff work with Rosalind anyway? ;-)

[przed.livejournal.com]

The pro editing suite (Final Cut Studio for the win!) is actually for my Mac. I somehow managed to convince work to pay for it (which is only fair, since they wouldn't pay for the damn machine even though they get the benefit of it) which means any time I need to do editing for work I get to do it at home. Alas, this means I can't use it at all while my computer is stuffed. But Don keeps threatening to start vidding, so putting my old version of Final Cut Express on his machine is something I should probably do eventually anyway.

As for how the creative stuff works with Ros? The answer is not very well at the moment. I can still get some writing done, but the vidding has been nigh on impossible. The problem is that by the time we get Ros to bed, and I watch the hour or two of TV a night I need to to keep the PVR from exploding, I'm usually bagged. Maybe I'll have 30 or 60 minutes to myself. LJ can suck that up quite nicely, or maybe I can work on a story. But vidding really does seem to require the 5 or 6 hour stretches that you can only really manage when you don't have a kid. If I only have an hour, it just gives me enough time to review what I've done, refamiliarize myself with the clips and maybe add one or two cuts, and then it's off to bed. Frustrating.

Once the computer is back and happy, though, I'm determined to employ some self-discipline and get to work on a vid, if for no other reason than I owe sarren a Sweet Charity vid. (It's for the Batman movies, so at least it's only 4 hours of source to go through.)

[norfolkdumpling.livejournal.com]

Ack! Sorry to hear about your poorly Mac. I hope the tech guys can sort it out with minimum fuss.