Murphy Has It Coming

I feel I’ve been wasting my time lately with all sorts of things that seem to pop up out of nowhere. I had one bad issue after another over the last three weeks. First of all my computer died and as you can imagine I was not happy about it because I have invested quite some money on extra hardware and software to upgrade it and keep it running smooth. It was still the perfect computer to me until it unexpectedly gave up on me one day while I was busy studying and working.

I heard this loud tick, my monitor went black and I could hear the fan slowly coming to a halt. I knew straight away that it was the power supply so I did some research online and found out, it had been a hardware issue waiting to happen. Apple knew about this since they released this computer, they’ve managed to sell faulty products for three years… Of course I checked to see if there was a repair program, there was, but it closed in January this year and knowing Apple I shouldn’t expect extras…

I did call though… and on top of all the crap, I had to deal with an extremely annoying person, who kept telling me that I didn’t register that computer with Apple. She had that tone in her voice like she was almost accusing me of stealing the piece of hardware. Later, after I’d spoken with a really nice person at the Apple dealer who’d explained to me how to check my registry, I found out that I was indeed registered. It only confirmed the fact that I’d been trying to have a conversation with a right cow.

I’m still thinking about making an official complaint, it was something the manager at the Apple store mentioned to me. It just doesn’t sit well with me and I don’t wish to be treated like that especially not by a company that has become extremely arrogant over the years. To be honest, I was so pissed off, I was ready to swap to PC… that should tell you something *wink*… It’s solved for now, I’m using my good old Powerbook: it doesn’t have enough power to do anything else besides email and internet.

But it works until the proper stuff is in. Of course it took me ages to transfer most of my files to one of my removable HDs. Lucky me I could borrow some gadget from my brother to connect a harddisk through USB to another computer to transfer stuff but I still need to find a case to put these old harddisks in so I can continue to use them. Something like this would be awesome… Anyway… when I finally had setup a proper work space I found out that my business domain had been hacked *bring it on!*

So I’m still cleaning up the mess… I had to delete websites and reinstall them, it’s the kind of stuff you don’t want to do when there are more urgent issues to deal with. I’m supposed to study the next couple of months to update my webdesign knowledge. I started reading some O’Reilly books on CSS, Drupal, Flash, CMS, SEO etc. and it has come to a grinding halt ever since I ran into these horrid problems. On top of that -since I haven’t got a start date yet with the new employer- I still have to apply for jobs.

I actually received a phone call last week from the owner of an architectural design agency who wanted to meet me and have a chat. I’d applied for a job the week prior to his phone call but the job was no longer available. He said he was impressed with my CV though and invited me to meet up with them. I’ll have to visit them this Thursday and in a way I’m really looking forward to this. I know they use Drupal to build websites while they’re also in need of Drupal freelancers: 1+1=2? *wink*

We’ll see… for now I have plenty of work to catch up on so if you wonder why I’m quiet again that is your answer. So if you will excuse me, I have someone called Murphy to deal with, I think I’m going to pwn him…

Hardware Upgrade

I’ve been postponing it for ages but while I was working on the template design of my new business blog the application started to fail on me. It kept crashing with one 3Gig file: I realised I had to install the whole package again. So while I was at it I thought I might as well put in the new gear: a 500Gb HD and 2x2Gb of RAM. What I thought would take me an hour in the end almost took me two days. It wasn’t the hardware causing me problems, that all went quite smooth, it was the software and I decided to do a clean system install.

Of course after the installation I found out that files were missing, mostly printer descriptions and prefs and although I did make some backups it was no point trying to sort out what was missing and where it was supposed to be on the system. I deleted all the Creative Suite applications and installed them again and although I still have to sort out stuff on my HDs and take care of archiving, my machine runs fine without any problems. I now have an extra HD to backup all the client files in case one of my LaCie Porsches fails.

It’s been a busy two days but I’m quite content with the results and I know I will be grateful for doing this if I was to experience a serious crash in the future… I’m so happy with my beast… *sigh*

:)

See the dirt? *EEEEW*

More dirt *YUK*

New HD with special ‘drive guides’ that were stored next to the HD bays [RAM modules top left]

New HD in its bay, haven’t connected power cable yet, just the data cable

New RAM modules installed, 8 slots all full *hehe*