Grab and Keel

And so, as comes to us all, the catastrophe happens. Left by me, and inspired by my hubby gleefully bounding into bed, my laptop soars too high and crashes like Icarus onto the night floor; a mangled body, it’s screen feathered and veined, chirping brokenly.

Grief ensues, my husband feels horrible, I feel horrible; my computer knows a terrible event has occurred. Does it even have a memory? Triage is begun, and attempts are made to communicate. I can see, by linking my husband’s computer to mine, that the data is still there, but I cannot reach the preferences to transfer the data elsewhere.  We evaluate; a new “in kind” one is $3000, plus another $1500 or so in applications.

My computer is around 3 years old. It is not old enough to replace. As such, though I did not plan a $1000 expenditure this month, one must be made. Together, my husband and I drove it to Apple Emergency where the woman at the “Genius Bar” clucks knowingly and takes it in hand.

Incommunicado, I waited. Abrupt loss of communication is a difficult thing. Since January 19th a myriad of events have occurred, including: the Obama inauguration, comings and goings of Presidential appointees, The Ledbetter bill passage, the stimulus bill, trips to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Clinton’s upcoming trip to Korea.

1500 emails arrived unread and now are sorted. Most were from news agencies; relatively few were spam. A remarkable 292 emails were from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) describing all manner of national peanutty horror, with an occasional report of listeria contamination in the fresh cheese, thrown in. (If you aren’t clear on how widespread the salmonella scare is for peanuts, do go to the FDA Website and scan the list HERE. The bottom line is don’t eat or feed a product to your pets if you aren’t sure it’s safe. If you want more general information go HERE.)

Communication loss affects finances as well. Fearing this kind of event I had been slow to go paperless with bank statements and bill paying. I had just completed doing this last month. As many of you probably know who use more than one computer, you must load the passwords, and get the substitute computer to recognize you. This takes time and is inconvenient when you have a lot of different accounts.

Mostly I felt I had let readers, and my blogging community down. I had developed a sense of responsibility about contributing, as small a contribution as it is.

The happy ending to this story is that Apple was able to cut around $300 off the price of repair, my data is saved and the entire case and screen were swapped out, in order to house my computer’s memory chips. The keys are a little stiffer, and the board a little bigger, but it’s still my computer. Yea! Thank you Apple, and the folks at the Emeryville Genius Bar!