This conversation transpired between myself and a very good friend just now.

It’s weird enough that I had to sanitize and share it because … well … see for yourself:

(WARNING: extremely geek-oriented material ahead; typos are original to the IM conversation)

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This is classic! Just classic!!!

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So I am sitting here, working on my iMac on the 25th of June. I had only JUST migrated all my work stuff back from the Macbook to the iMac since it is a much better machine to work on when I can. I was just getting back into the groove of working with a desktop instead of on a laptop perched on my knees. I was trying to figure out the best way to keep info sync’d between them both and was working on a plan when “poof” the iMac display just froze.

No application was responding, I couldn’t get the activity monitor open to see what was hogging resources, I couldn’t force quit anything … in fact, I could do absolutely nothing. Which reminded me of the early lockups I used to have when I first got the iMac … you remember those days, don’t you?

So, with a sigh, I turned the iMac off at the power button, waited a minute and fired it up again. While I waited, I booted my work stuff up on the Macbook to at least let my boss know I was not suddenly gone out of rudeness, but that I had a bonafide tech emergency on my hands. While I am typing to him, I hear the iMac making some funny sounds, and I turn to see this icon show up in the middle of the grey boot screen:

Thanks for the image, UrbanTornado – hope you don’t mind that i borrowed it.

While my own monitor isn’t that large, the question sign in all it’s stark horror was just as memorable. Oh how I cried and gnashed my teeth. Then I thought of what my good friend DJ would have told me “load up your disk utilities from your install disk”.

That exercise told me what I already knew – hard drive, well and truly trashed. It gave me some hope by telling me that while the disk wasn’t repairable or recoverable, that a reinstall and restore would probably fix the problem

I was jubilant and proceeded to do as advised.

Ha! What a load of BS! The install stalled (heh) after about 2 minutes in to tell me that OS X could not be installed on the chosen volume because it was irreparable damaged. Ok, ok – so it didn’t quite put it that way, but that was the end result. My hard disk was well and truly DONE.

I panicked first … then while I sat looking at the iMac I had added to my shopping cart at store.apple.com and wondering how I was going to finance this purchase, the panic drained away and I remembered what else my friend DJ and I had been talking about quite recently – a hard drive replacement for the iMac. At the time, the idea was to get a bigger drive to facilitate not only my too-large photo collection, but to also be able to bootcamp with a sizeable enough partition to make Windows gaming a possibility.

So off to ifixit.com I went.

The idea was to find a 500GB or so drive. Well, fortunately or unfortunately, the smallest drive I could get for my iMac off ifixit.com was a 1TB.

Tears gone, panic departed, exuberance ensued … until I found out that it was going to take at BEST a week for this new drive to get to me.

To cut this already too-long story short, even when the drive arrived, I couldn’t put it in because I didn’t have the right tools. Apple uses some very odd screws to fasten their stuff in so I had to order those and wait another couple of days. Fortuitously, the tools arrived on Saturday and I was able to take apart my iMac, replace the hard drive, reinstall the OS and restore my stuff to just about the point at which I lost it on the 25th …

It took me about an hour with the guide off ifixit.com – which was quite good considering it isn’t the correct guide for my model.

I even got it right the first time around. Which is especially gratifying for me being that this is the first time I’ve been inside a machine with the intent to replace stuff in about … ooo – 4 years?

What’s even better is the fact that I am now bootcamp’d … with still too much space to fill on my OS X partition.

I am a happy camper again.

What would make me happier still?

A new camera to take picts to fill that space up with.

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I had to find the exact quote and use it.

By far, XT-002 Deconstructor is possibly one of WoW’s most annoying boss fights ever (“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” in a high-pitched voiced, kiddie-tantrum fashion complete with pounding his fists into the floor) … but right here and right now, his first statement is so very apt.

I’ve got a couple new toys! I promise I won’t break them this time!

Well, one of them hasn’t arrived yet and I am going to have to wait until next week before I’ll see it. That would be the iPhone 4.  I tried pre-ordering for delivery, but it failed every time and I got impatient. Besides, I figure it’ll be nice to take a road trip down to Austin and pick it up … hopefully, I won’t get squashed in the store. Wish me luck?

In any case, I have abused my iPhone 3G pretty badly – moreso than any other phone I’ve had and I wonder what the deal is with that … how is it that the fanatically cautious fyrfli has been so careless? I tell myself I will be more careful this time and I probably will … the 3G has dropped far less in these last few months than it did in the first few months. That might have something to do with not putting it in my back pocket whilst I climb out of the Jeep anymore.

But today … WordPress 3.0 was unleashed. As of this writing, they number of downloads are still under 20,000 as per the download counter page.

I’ve had multiple requests to report whether there are any breaks and so I figured this was as good a time as any to post something and see whether anything has really broken. I guess we’ll see once I press the button.

So pretty … so shiny … pets new WordPress install …

On a serious note, the upgrade went flawlessly, I pushed the button in the admin panel and was done in minutes. Nothing was broken when I first reloaded the page, my theme has remained sound and all my plugins seem to still work well. So I am going to say that this has been a very successful upgrade.

I guess time will tell if those little tiny niggling things are still working too … you know, the ones that make you look back and say “I should have waited before I said I like it.”

~~~

In other news, took a little trip out to the local lake here … got a couple picts … G said it doesn’t feel like my usual shots and she’s right … either I am rusty, or I just dislike Texas so much that it’s coming out in the pictures … or … maybe it’s time for me to try something else? You tell me …

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Since we haven’t been told which day exactly hubby is leaving, we sit and wait this week … wait for a phone call. One phone call that could come at any time – night or day – that will forever change our lives. It sounds dramatic, but I tell you that it is not untrue nor is it overstated. This deployment has already changed us in ways that I don’t know that I would see normally. If it were not for blogging about it, or being able to talk to people who know me well … I don’t think I would notice the changes at all.

For one thing, the hole in my chest right now would be a LOT larger than it is – but somehow, I have managed to prepare in some small way for this.

For instance, I have been able to discuss things with a certain detachment that I am not wholly sure I would have been able to before.  I have always been somewhat practical about illness and death and the issues that go along with those things. So much so that I often never discuss my views with people for fear of coming off as cold and heartless. The thing is that I have always thought that these things are a part of life and that we can’t hide from them. We can’t hide and we must prepare – no matter how hard it is to do so. However, I have never been IN the situation that needs that kind of discussion before now. And this one is above and beyond your normal preparations – know what I mean? I can’t help but feel, though, that in some way my long-time views helped me with this.

I have tons of distractions lined up … I tell myself I will be fine. I tell myself the year will be gone before I know it. I tell myself that I am used to being alone and fending for myself and that my forced independence of a few years back was good for something. It feels comforting to tell myself these things. It even feels as if there is truth behind them too.

The best part of all this is my true friends who – in spite of all their own trials and tribulations – have pledged their time and their voice to lending me support when I need it most – through this the most difficult year of my life to date.  I know I will have to do a lot of the legwork on my own to get through this, but it’s very encouraging to know that there are people who are there and willing to lend an ear if I need it .. when I need it.

Good friend betta dan packet money. (Jamaican proverb – good friends are better than pocket money). And I’ll tell you this – there is no truer saying than that.

In happier news, my boss has invited me to Costa Rica later this year to attend the first ever company meeting. It sounds like he has big things planned for me and I am actually excited about it. Aside from just feeling like I am appreciated and needed, it will certainly be an adventure and true fodder for my little S2 IS. So I am marking that down on my calendar beside the trip back home to Jamaica to see my family and friends who I haven’t seen in almost 2 years.

Distractions, activities, plans, projects and plenty of hobbies to keep me occupied. Frankly, I think I am going to be fine – in so much as the year will seem to fly off like feathers on a stiff summer wind.

Yea! Looks like “purging the negative” post helped.   It’s ALL good! wewt!

I better be careful or I’ll end up with too much to do this year…. giggle

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