The 15-Day Headache

Is it actually physically possible to have a headache for 15 days? Yup.

It all started on September 17.

I was spending my weekend working on a poster presentation for work. The presentation was on September 28, and I needed one 24"x36" and two 12"x36" posters. I got most of it done, but I needed a couple of photos and images to add to it yet. I wasn't at all stressed about it. As long as I got the files to the printer by the end of the week, all was going to be fine.

Well, Sunday I was checking email when my darling little iMac decided to freeze up. Very unusual - no kernel panic or anything, everything just froze. I had to press the power button to shut down. I let it go for a couple of minutes, then powered back up. While it was starting up, I took Cragar out to pee.

When I got back into my office, the screen was gray with stripes and what looked like a ghost image of the screen when it froze up before. It refused to boot any further. So I did the usual, zapped the PRAM - didn't work. Tried to boot up from the Panther CD to check the disc and repair permissions - didn't work. I finally called AppleCare - the tech had me reset NVRAM (which I already started doing while I was on hold). Did nothing. I finally got it to boot from the Hardware Test CD - after running the test, I got an error code for a bad video card.

Sunday, September 17 was the LAST DAY of my AppleCare warranty. Yes, my computer had the good sense to take a shit while I still had 6 hours of coverage left.

So Apple said they'd ship a new part and schedule me for onsite service. Fantastic. I can still get my files of my hard drive and get them to the printer on time.

Monday morning I got a call from Qualixserv, the onsite repair place, letting me know they received the information from Apple and a technician would be calling me to set up an appointment within 24 to 48 hours.

24 to 48 hours pass - no call. So I call Qualixserv back and ask what's going on. They had the technician call me to give me an update and apparently Apple sent my replacement part to the wrong place. They sent it to Washington, PA, which is CLEAR ACROSS THE STATE FROM ME. He said he'd have the field service location in Washington send it to him, as well as order another part from Apple. Whichever one he got first, he'd be out to replace it.

This is the same technician who helped me out with my previous sagas. I asked him what part they were shipping. Guess what? ANOTHER LOGIC BOARD. This will be logic board #4 in three years.

By Friday, I still hadn't heard a word. I was really getting stressed about getting my presentation done for work. I guess I could have recreated it, but it took me hours of work to do what I already had done. I got home from work early that day, so I decided to give Apple a call. After waiting on hold for 60 minutes (seriously, that's ridiculous), I got someone who didn't know what the hell was going on, either. I'm trying to tell her Apple shipped the part to the wrong place, she's asking me where it should go, and I'm telling her, "I don't know where the hell it's supposed to go!". She let out a sigh of impatience and then I lost it. I told her, "All I'm trying to do is get my computer fixed. I'm in the middle here. All I know is Apple said they sent it on Sunday night, the repair place doesn't have it today - 5 days later. I don't give a crap where the hell it is now, but I want a part at my house on Monday morning and I want my computer fixed."

Seriously, if she was sitting in front of me, I would have hit her.

So I get a call from Apple guy Rodney later, telling me they're going to get this all worked out. I told him it wouldn't be such a big deal, but this is the fourth time I've needed a logic board in three years! That's insane! I told him again I needed it fixed Monday (which was 3 days before my presentation). Later that night, I got a call from Qualixserv chick Sarah and she told me Apple shipped another logic board Friday. The times were a bit screwy - I talked to Rodney around 5:30 but she got the request for another part at 3:50. Hmmmm, strange. But she said it's shipping DHL and I can call back later for the weigh bill information. I wanted to make sure it was shipping to the right place!

I tried calling ALL WEEKEND LONG, and there was no weigh bill information. I had no idea what was going on. Finally, Monday at around 12:30PM, I got a tracking number from Apple. I asked Dave's mom to go to DHL online and see where it was, and it was in Reading. Great, at least it's in the proper location. I called the technician and told him the part was there. He came to replace it around 3:30 Monday.

So, he replaced the logic board, waited around while I started up, and everything was working great. I opened the three files I needed and transferred them to a flash drive.

But wait. That's only a 8 day headache. Oh, yea. Twenty minutes after the technician left, the fucking thing froze up again! I know, I know, you're thinking, "Surely, you're shitting me!" Oh no, I'm not shitting you.

So I'm back on the phone with AppleCare, and they're of course confused, so I get transferred to a product specialist, Jamie, who tells me she's the "end of the line" as far as this problem goes. I'm not sure how it was intended, but I took a little offense to that. I'm fucking sorry I'm being a pain in the ass, but when I spend $2200 on a computer, I do not expect it to take a complete and total shit in three years. But she said, "We'll get you up and running".

After doing more of the same diagnostics, guess what? MY LOGIC BOARD IS DEFECTIVE. Hey, I got an idea! STOP SENDING ME FUCKING DEFECTIVE LOGIC BOARDS! Where's Carlos Menica with his "Dee Dee Dee" award when you need him? Good God!

So now they're shipping another one. But this time, they're also shipping me a new hard drive and new RAM. And it's a replacement, not a repair. I think that means I get new, not refurbished parts. But I don't know. All I do know is that because it was a replacement, I was not allowed to keep my old hard drive. So not only did I lose a couple of files since my last backup (data recovery NOT part of AppleCare warranty), now all of the stuff that was on there is somewhere at Apple. Stuff on there like my mortgage receipts, taxes.... fun stuff like that. Great.

So I pretty much abandoned having my computer operational before my presentation Thursday. I would have liked to do a short video presentation to accompany my poster, but I guess it just wasn't going to happen. At least I got the files I needed off my hard drive before it decided to die again. I finished them up at work, then took my flash drive to Staples to get everything printed.

That made my headache worse.

I dropped off the files on Tuesday, September 26. They told me they wouldn't be ready until after 6PM, so I told them I'd stop in Wednesday morning at 7:30 to pick them up. So bright and early Wednesday morning, there I was. And the lady tells me, "Oh, it looks like they didn't print" My head started pounding so hard I could see everything in my field of vision pulsing. I thought I was either going to pass out or explode. Luckily, I did neither, and left Staples wondering just what kind of bad karma I put out in the universe to have things get so completely fucked.

I ended up using our printing service at work to get the posters printed (at a cost of about 15 times what I would have paid for my regular online printing service), so the presentation ended up going ok.

When I got home Thursday night, there was a call from another technician to set up a repair appointment. I called him back immediately, left a message on his voicemail, then didn't hear from him again until Monday afternoon.

So he came out, replaced my logic board (so this is logic board #5), HD (and was nice enough to ask if I was sure I wanted to replace the HD since loading everything again would be a pain in the ass), and RAM. We started everything up, and of course since it was a brand new disk, I had to install an OS. I took the opportunity to finally upgrade to Tiger.

One thing I learned about installing an OS on a brand spanking new HD: hold the mouse button down to eject the CD tray on start up, insert the install disc, when the disc boots up, choose "Disk Utility" and click the Erase tab. Erase the drive to reformat (I guess partition and initialize) prior to installing the OS or else when it's time to ask for a "Destination location", there will be nothing there.

Yes, I literally had a headache for the 15 days of this saga. Two of those days the headaches were actually migraines.

My new replacement parts are warrantied for 90 days.

If anything breaks again, I will need to be heavily medicated.