JUST A LITTLE ADVENTURE…
Ohhhhhh, I’ve had fun today….my six month old Mac has been having problems the last week….working slower and slower and slower…and REALLY not responding as it should. Today…frozen….Odd how things work out sometimes….the tech helpline said it was probably the hard-drive…and it needed to go to an apple store….if I’d been home, it would have had to go to Chicago….I’d have had to mail if off and hope that I saw it again sometime in the next month..
How lucky for me that an hour and a half away, there is an actual Apple store…..I’ve never been in one before….So I packed up my poor little Mac, made an appointment with, as they put it, one of their genius’s, and when the time came jumped in the car and drove for an hour and 45 minutes…the wind has been howling today, and I got to drive over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge…over Tampa Bay..while the waves crashed below and the wind pushed the car around.
They are AMAZING in these stores….it took about two minutes for my “genius” to determine that it was the hard-drive….when she learned that I had driven that far…she said they would put in a new hard-drive while I waited…if I didn’t mind waiting two hours…So I wandered the mall for two hours….quite the eye opener…the Mall had stores that I’d never been in before..Burberry, Coach, Luis Vuitton, Gucci, Henri Bendel….
My big purchase?….a packet of pretzel sticks.
I didn’t just window shop and eat pretzels..I found a place to sit down and finish my pretzels and someone sat down across from me with fussy “baby”,and pretty soon “baby” and I started flirting and he started smiling and his Mother started taking pictures and we had a lot of fun..
At the end of the two hours the computer was ready…with a brand new hard-drive and cable…and absolutely wiped clean…everything gone…I was presented with the computer and told “she” was ready to go home..
I put my “girl” in the car, turned on the GPS, which turned out to be a LIFE saver and headed back South….back across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge….IN THE DARK AND THE HOWLING WIND…and finally…HOME.
What a fun way to spend my Saturday………..BUT MY MAC IS WORKING!!!!!
Same thing happened to my Mac’s hard drive a few months ago. After the new drive was installed the Time Machine backup worked great so I never lost anything but I did buy a SECOND hard drive back up just in case!
February 18, 2013 at 1:55 pm
That is DEFINITELY on my list of “Do right away!”
February 18, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Ah, my old stomping grounds! That mall, if I’m thinking of the right one, used to be falling apart and nobody went there. Then it was revamped with all these glamorous and expensive stores, pretty much right when I moved away from Tampa. The Sunshine Skyway is quite an adventure — I prefer not to take it when possible. I drove miles out of my way to take the Causeway instead of the bridges whenever I could! : )
February 17, 2013 at 3:06 pm
LOL, I don’t blame you for taking the Causeway…I just try to pretend I’m somewhere else while I’m zooming over the bridge…..but most of the time, I just remember movies where sections of a bridge fall into the water…
February 17, 2013 at 4:58 pm
I LOVE the Apple Store. They have helped me so much in loading stuff into my Mac and even when my Mac crashed, they fixed it and I basically got a brand new Mac–minus of course all my stuff, which it took me quite a while to get over. Most of my stuff was in the Cloud, thank God. I will never go back to anything other than a Mac. It is the best there is.
February 17, 2013 at 1:36 pm
I wish the Cloud would let me in…but I’ve purchased a book to teach me about the Mac and I’ll get it….I was SO impressed with their service…I tried really hard not to think about what I’d lost…and I was proud! I didn’t cry
February 17, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Yes, I, too, hope you had everything backed up! My son takes care of that for me. (I could probably do it myself, but I love having him do it for me. He’s my own personal IT guy!)
February 17, 2013 at 12:29 pm
You my dear ARE VERY, VERY LUCKY to have your own IT guy…JEALOUS!!
February 17, 2013 at 5:00 pm
Ohhh, thank goodness for the Apple geniuses, but I’m sorry that you lost some of your precious photos
. I would say that’s pretty impressive customer service though. Ahhh, the Apple store – when I walk inside one my jaw drops to the ground and I walk around touching every device in the store. It’s like a visit to paradise!! We have 3 iPads and 3 iPhones in our house, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I have our four pc laptops networked in our house and have spent so much money on Windows software, I would probably have a Mac too!!
February 17, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Lololololololol! WOW! You’ve got tons of tech going on in your house
Now that I’ve actually been in an Apple store I can understand what you’re saying…there’s SO much that I like to have…I tried VERY hard not to look at anything!!!
February 17, 2013 at 5:02 pm
You must have very good willpower, or maybe you were wearing blinders??
February 17, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Wow that WAS an adventure….! Pretzels, babies, window shopping, Apple store and hard drive repair – - – you certainly DO live life on the edge girl!
Hugs, Pam
February 17, 2013 at 11:22 am
A hard drive to fix a hard drive! Aren’t you lucky there wasn’t rain to go with the wind, seeing that your mac wasn’t working?
February 17, 2013 at 6:37 am
The Mac is Back… but did we back up the Mac.?.. have we lost lots of data.?.. have you still got the old HD..?.. cause you might just be able to get it back from the old mac…
February 17, 2013 at 5:48 am
Glad they got it sorted.
I was in an Apple store in Manhattan recently – 5th ave and 57th St, in front of (below really) FAO Schwarz toy store.
A big glass entrance with stairs and an elevator leading down to the store.
It’s like a giant fishbowl.
Eh.
February 17, 2013 at 3:47 am
Oooooohhh…..a giant fishbowl….were there people running around with nets trying to catch you??
February 19, 2013 at 12:55 am
More like being in the hipster exhibit at the aquarium.
February 19, 2013 at 1:29 am
Wow! I’m really surprised that they didn’t transfer your data to the new drive. I was just discussing this kind of thing in my post of yesterday. I think I’m going to use Carbonite for back-up. Yikes! So sorry you lost all those pictures.
February 17, 2013 at 3:28 am
Hi there! I was just thinking of you today…thought…Gina must not be posting much anymore…hadn’t seen anything from you come into my mailbox…so I just went and checked my list of blogs I follow and you’re on there…it’s set up for me to get your posts…and …I’m not getting them?!….Time to do some detective work..
February 19, 2013 at 1:01 am
The same thing happened to me for a period of about a month and then all of a sudden they’re all back in my inbox. Go figure. Hope all is well with you, dear friend. Things are crazy busy around here and it’s supposed to snow here tomorrow. I’ll be taking pictures of course – LOL
February 20, 2013 at 2:04 am
Things are pretty good…..I’m actually taking time to do some writing..I have a book going..sort of….so that’s been fun…sort of…lol
I’ll check in to see your snow pictures…I’ll bet it will be just beautiful
February 20, 2013 at 2:57 am
Sorry that you had such a problem, but I love your attitude.
February 17, 2013 at 3:19 am
lol, Thank you
February 17, 2013 at 3:26 am
Now you’ve got me all nervous. I’m going to back up everything… tomorrow.
February 17, 2013 at 2:54 am
Do it!! I had written a few pages for a book I’m working on..and I was so tired that I didn’t back them up…..for some unknown reason…the computer “thawed” for just a few minutes this morning and I was able to burn the file to a CD….I was just SICK….until I was able to burn it…but lost about 1500 pictures..
February 17, 2013 at 3:12 am
Ouch!! Yes, first thing tomorrow, I’ll back up my files.
February 17, 2013 at 5:08 am
Yikes! Glad you’re all set, and hope you had good backups for your data!
February 17, 2013 at 2:51 am
I was just telling Anneli that I HADN’T backed up some really important writing…and by sheet luck, the computer came back to life for me to burn the data to a CD…the other things I lost…well, I’ll just have to deal with it..
February 17, 2013 at 3:15 am
A cautionary tale! Think I”ll do some backups hios afternoon!
February 17, 2013 at 5:12 pm
Definitely do some backing up….sigh..
February 17, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Yay! I am just about to go into town and buy an ipad so I hope I get a genius too!
February 17, 2013 at 2:46 am
I loved it…they had me go up to a counter that they called their “genius bar”…
February 17, 2013 at 3:15 am
Above comment from me.
February 17, 2013 at 2:46 am
Yes, It’s terrible when our tech toys don’t work– and great there are those that can fix them! Glad all worked out!
February 17, 2013 at 2:45 am
Me too! What a LONG day..
February 17, 2013 at 2:46 am