A Hell of a Hiatus

I haven't made an entry on this weblog in quite some time.

Originally it was because we were going on vacation.

But I thought I'd be smart and take my iMac in to get the superdrive replaced while we were in Ocean City.

Sound reasoning, right?

In theory, I guess.

I picked up my Mac the Friday after we got back from vacation - that would have been May 27. A week and a half to replace a defective drive... I would have liked it to be sooner, but I was just happy to get it back.

Or so I thought.

When I hooked everything back up and powered up, I noticed I didn't get the nice little startup chimes. No biggie, I figured the volume was probably down. I figured the best way to test out the new drive was to install my new Digital Juice editor's toolkit. I installed the new Juicer, and started to install the movie previews for the toolkit. It was going so slow. About 10-15 minutes to copy 30MB. Something was not right. I put in the second dvd to copy more previews, and it seemed like it was hung up. Then I got a kernel panic. I think I've only had one kernel panic since I've had the Mac - and that was from a corrupt font file.

So I restart - guess what? Kernel panic on startup! I tried for three hours to get my poor little Mac to work with no success. I tried booting from the cd that came with the computer, got that to work only once without kernel panic, but immediately went into kernel panic when I tried to repair permissions from the disc. I got it to boot from my Panther install disc 1, and tried repairing permissions from there, but no dice. Kernel panics all over the place. I tried zapping the PRAM, but my screen just stayed black.

It was 3AM and I was pissed.

Saturday morning I get on the horn to AppleCare, and they had me go through several maneuvers - including booting into Open Firmware to reset the NVRAM and such. Didn't work. He was about to have me do an Archive and Install (which seems like the solution for everything as far as AppleCare goes), but I couldn't start up with the Panther disc.

The verdict, after 1 hour on the phone? Take it back in for service.

Before I did so, I tried booting again. I booted successfully, and out of curiosity, went to the System Profiler to see info about the drive that was installed. Up pops a screen that is telling me I've got 512MB RAM!!! Whaaaaaaa??? I've got a GIG, baby, where's the rest of it? According to the Profiler, Slot 1 was empty, Slot 2 had 512MB.

Have I mentioned that I was pissed?

How the hell did the computer "pass all tests" before I picked it up?

So I hauled it back in the following Tuesday (Monday was a holiday), tell the guy of my troubles, and was assured they'll "be on it right away". By Thursday I didn't hear anything, so I gave them a call. Lo and behold - I need a new logic board. When the hell did this happen? How the hell did my Mac go from operating perfectly (except for the inability to read dual-layer dvds) to needing a whole new logic board??

I finally got it back today - three weeks plus one day after I originally dropped it off - with a brand new logic board and a brand new Superdrive. At startup I got the nice little chimes like I'm supposed to, but it took forever to boot. I installed my Digital Juice stuff, imported some photos, did some Photoshopping, and now I'm making this entry. I'm wondering what will happen when I shut down and restart.

I'm afraid to find out.

I'm crossing my fingers...