the iMac debacle

this… thing happened last night with the iMac.

for those that follow the Twitter feed, you know how much fun it was.

———

first, my blame: i haven’t run a Time Machine backup in awhile. so lots of newer work is borked. brilliant. ok. got that out of the way.

second…

i noticed that our iMac was beginning to run a bit… choppy. i opened up Aperture to pull some photos out for work and had iTunes running. scrolling through photos in Aperture was a bit dodgy, but that was sometimes hit or miss anyways. we’ve been shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II for awhile and the files are huge. stuttering is somewhat expected.

i first really noticed the problem in iTunes when a song began to stop… and then start again… and then stop… and start again.

so i closed everything, repaired permissions on both user accounts, and restarted.

and all i got when i rebooted was the startup chime, the gray screen + Apple logo… and then it would shut itself off.

booting from the install disk, i attempted to Verify then Repair the startup disk. and then the error message popped up: (blah blah blah) invalid node structure.

aw, hell naw. i then tried booting from TechTool Deluxe, then DiskWarrior, then from the Install disc again… nothing. well, i could get the Installer disc to work, but there wasn’t anything i could do with it once it booted (other than to erase the hard drive).

from all accounts, it seems i’m screwed. i scheduled Apple to call me at 8am this morning (which they did), and they told me (gently!) what i feared the most: i’m screwed.

———

so before all you meanie headz jump on the “HAHA APPLE SUXXORS!” bandwagon, realize that the hard drive (the root of all this trouble) was an “upgrade” drive. work was performed by Mac & More in Prattville. its typically something i would try to do, but the process for upgrading the hard drive involves taking off the front glass plate, and, uhh… no.

for the most part, i think we’ll be in the clear. all of my work materials (current work projects) are stored both in daily/weekly/monthly backups and on an online server (my iDisk). my user account on the iMac didn’t really hold anything of great importance. Jackie’s user account is a slightly different story. most of her work is now stored on her MacBook, but much of her earlier work was on the iMac.

i’m not holding out much, if any, hope for any sort of data recovery. i did leave explicit instructions that if they were able to recover anything to grab and archive a very specific set of files: all the Aperture Project folders in Jackie’s user account.

but now i/we wait, and this is the hardest part. i wasn’t given a very definitive timeline for when to expect repairs to be done; it was more of a vague “Monday? maybe Sunday since we have techs working on Sunday now?” i explained that i’m leaving town Sunday afternoon and will be gone for a week and i don’t expect my now 6-month pregnant wife to drive to P’ville to pick up a 25+ lb. iMac and drive it home.

[not that i would ever think to vocalize this, but i really wanted to add in: "by the way, i've now purchased three Macs from y'all in less than a year, and one of those is broken because of a faulty hard drive y'all stuck in there. bump me up the list, jackass, and make me happy. seriously. do it now." but i didn't. not yet. we'll see...]

so there’s all that in a nutshell.

holla.

well… hm.

i’m honestly trying my best to just say, “whatever” and not worry about it.

but this is the first time i’ve ever felt a little hurt i wasn’t invited to a wedding.

yeah. seriously. its a little weird.

a request…

 

the good days.

 

 

a dear friend of mine, my oldest friend, went through a divorce lately (as many of you who read this probably know). because of where he lives, the had to have a one-year trial separation. that officially started in 2007, on his birthday. the one year was up on his birthday in 2008, mid-December. the last we had really talked about it, he wasn’t sure what was going on with it. there are some obvious irreconcilable differences between the two of them and the marriage is kaput… its just all a matter of paperwork, apparently.

while divorce is something that is never truly a clean break, its complicated by the fact they have two small children.

i got a text message today, stating that she is ready to move back to New York, kids in tow. we haven’t spoken on the phone yet, but we’ve known each other long enough (since we were six years old) that it doesn’t take much to get a grasp on the way he’s feeling via text message: he’s absolutely dumbfounded and has no idea what to do. there was no joking, there was no snark; the texts were facts, and clear indicators that he’s lost and torn up about it.

the reality of it is that in a court of law, she would be found to be better suited for raising two children… technically. but knowing the kind of person she is and how poorly she’s treated him throughout this process, its apparent that he’s a better person than she is.

i don’t know what is to be done for him. he lives nearly five hours away and isn’t always accessible by phone. i would ask that you all keep him, and the children, in your thoughts and prayers. lord knows the boy’s been tested by life before, but this is likely the hardest one yet.

that is all.