Well, dear readers, Tuesday was magic, yesterday was tragic. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, Tuesday was magic, yesterday was tragic. The tragic began in the very late afternoon. It had already been a completely sucky day due to this ongoing bank fraud stuff that is slowly getting itself fixed – too slowly for my taste. At about five o’clock, there I was, listening to music and doing some work on the computer when suddenly the computer began spazzing out, the screen turned orange and whatever was playing in iTunes was skipping like a damaged CD. Obviously I went into complete panic mode. I manually shut down the computer, and then restarted. On my screen was the usual gray Apple screen and logo but there were also green stripes going up and down. It kept trying to boot up, would get halfway then shut itself down and automatically restart. This it did over and over again. Then I entered panic and paranoia mode because earlier in the day I’d gotten a pop-up thing on my screen saying another device was using my IP address. I didn’t know what that meant and I closed the window and went about my business. I powered up the MacBook Air, went to Apple support and clicked on the “call now” option. They called, although there was a ten-minute wait, while I was completely freaking out. The guy had me unplug the machine for five seconds and then replug. But we couldn’t get it to boot up – he had me try several things, none of which worked. He then said I’d have to take it in and he made me an appointment for Friday. I got off the phone, and then immediately had them call me again, hoping for a more helpful person.
Thankfully I got a more helpful person. I’d already unplugged the computer again and it had been unplugged for fifteen minutes. He had me plug it in and I turned the machine on and gone were the green stripes and it booted up – excruciatingly slow but about ten minutes later I was on my desktop and everything was loaded. We did a screen sharing session so he could suss out why it was taking so long – but as we were going through things the computer spazzed out again and shut off. He had me unplug again and plug back in fifteen seconds later – but we got the green stripes again – we shut it off and then we restarted with me holding down the shift key. That was supposed to put us in some mode but it didn’t work, so we shut off again and restarted this time holding down option and R key – that put us in some other mode – recovery – and that worked. We went to repair the hard drive and it tried and failed – corrupted. I asked him right then if this pop-up thing that another device was using the same IP address as mine might have meant someone was in my computer, but he was pretty certain it was just one of my other devices – phone, iPad or this here MacBook Air. I then remembered the brief power outage that had happened a week ago and caused all sorts of problems, from the alarm people being called because the phones went dead to it completely frying my little cell tower. He said that might well have also caused a problem with the hard drive, but he wasn’t sure. From that mode I was able to get back to my desktop. I decided (with him on the phone) to put a copy of my main folder onto a memory stick so I’d have that for the Air. I did and it seemed fine. He gave me his personal extension should there be any problems and that was that. My computer was on and working so I could do stuff, but I just kept putting it to sleep so it wouldn’t spazz out. I took the memory stick and dragged the folder to the Air desktop where it couldn’t be read. Odd, thought I. So, I went back to the main computer and did a clone of the folder and put it on Dropbox. Then I tried opening Dropbox from the Air where it wouldn’t read the folder or allow me to even see what was in it. I went back to the computer and tried from there and there I could absolutely open the folder and see everything in it. Odd, thought I. Meanwhile, we’d also ascertained that at 4:46, which was just prior to all this horrid stuff, the Time Machine had done a back-up so I knew we that everything was safe. I believe it’s been trying to do one ever since but actually hasn’t.
So, by this time it was already past nine, so I went to Gelson’s and got the last of their mac-and-cheese with chilis whose name I can’t remember at the moment. I came home, ate it, and began watching a motion picture. But I went back to the computer and decided to write these here notes while it was still functioning. I opened the Notes Word doc and the entire document was gobbledygook. I went through the roof, almost literally. I opened other documents, same thing, including all the book manuscript Word docs. And yet, some were okay – it made no sense to me. PDFs seemed fine, jpgs seemed fine. I went back to the Notes document and began typing anew and I saw instantly what it was doing – everything was a letter off on the keyboard. I did some research, found a thing about recovering document text, tried it on the Notes and it worked although the symbols were all screwy – for example all apostrophes were division symbols. Perhaps the corrupt hard drive corrupted everything but the hope is that the back-up from 4:46 would be correct and we should be able to ultimately restore from that. All very scary. Another interesting thing was that the gobbledygook only happened with documents in Courier New – all the Times New Roman documents were fine, save for the occasional screwy symbol. So, I couldn’t even write the notes on that computer, which is why I’m writing on the Air. So, in the computer will go on Friday and I’m sure it will be getting a new hard drive and then hopefully we can do the restore that’s necessary.
Prior to all that, I’d gotten nine hours of sleep, had the usual salad and bagel, picked up some packages, and then spent an hour on the phone dealing with the bank stuff. I did a two-and-a-half mile jog, too. The rest you know. It was the kind of day that simply made you want to take about four pounds of Seconal.
Today will hopefully be better than yesterday. We still have to cast one more person and then I can get everyone their music but only if I can access my computer long enough to do so.
Tomorrow I’ll take the desktop computer in to the Apple Store and see what’s what. It was also suggested to me that I take in into a Mac specialist store (I was given the name of one in Burbank) to see if they could do it. It might be faster and less expensive that way. But I always think you should go to Apple, although they’ll probably just send it off for a new hard drive. Not sure what the weekend holds and I can’t say I really care.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, cast our final performer, eat, jog, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What has been your worst computer nightmare? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that this day is finally at an end with the hard times at Hard Drive High.