The Death of my Mac G5
A most sad event has occurred.
A death in the family.
Well, OK, I’m being over-dramatic, but I do so dearly love my computers, it was the death of my Mac G5.
You must understand. I’m afraid I don’t fit well into the “girly-girl” stereotype. Perhaps it comes from being raised with three brothers, and no sisters. Perhaps its just the way I am.
But, I don’t like to shop. Clothes mean little to me, other than a means to keep warm, (and I am cold more often than not.) How I look when I stay warm, though, I’m not overly particular about.
Imelda Marcos, deposed ruler of the Philippines, would be horrified at my taste in shoes. I have a pair of hiking boots, that is about five years old. They are from the men’s section of a sporting goods store. I got them for a trip to Germany, because we were going to climb one of the smaller Alps. (We did, it was fun. Jovani wore Alex strapped to his back.) I still like those boots, and wear them everyday in the winter. I have a pair of sneakers for the gym. I have a pair of Ugg boots for after surfing, (yes, Ugg boots have a practical application and it is not for wearing to Hanna Montana concerts. They are meant to warm up bare, frozen feet-- that is why they are lined with sheepskin. Once your feet have been dangling under your surfboard in 50 degree water for several hours, they go completely numb. You shove them, bare, into Uggs, to get the circulation back, to avoid frostbite.) I have a pair of dress shoes, but avoid dressing up, if at all possible. When I worked in New York City, I had to wear a suit EVERYDAY. Pleghh! I kept a few of those suits, but gave most to an organization that helps disavantaged folks look nice for job interviews.
I don’t like shopping, or jewelry. I wear my wedding ring, but wish it was smaller. I asked my husband for a very small ring, but you know men and their egos. (Sorry, honey.) I don’t like flashy jewelry. I feel it makes you a walking target. (I worked in New York City. You don’t forget things like that...)
I have directly asked my husband if we could trade my current wedding ring for a simpler one, and put the difference in the bank for our son’s college account. (No, I am not kidding. I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I just felt that a flashy ring is asking for trouble.) He wears a plain gold band. I’d be fine wearing a plain gold band, identical to his. I don’t need a diamond to show my love for him. I love him, because I love him. There is no diamond needed to show that. But, we could invest the money into a Roth IRA and let it build from now until Alex’s senior year of high school...
(sigh)
This is one argument I am not going to win, so I’ve given up on it.
I don’t wear earrings. My hair covers my ears, so there is no sense in it.
Besides for that, every day since I was 18, I have worn a gold cross that was a gift from my parents when I graduated high school.
Oh, but do I have one weakness...
There is one thing I like very, very much...
One thing that makes me read the “Technology” section of the San Jose Mercury News first each morning...
I love computers.
(And, science fiction.)
(But, that’s a story for another day...)
I have owned a computer since I was 8 years old.
How I managed such a thing when I was 8 is a bit of a puzzle to me because we were actually rather on the lower end of middle class, and money was tight. I do remember saving all my birthday and Christmas money, and being very focused on this goal of owning a computer. It was a Texas Instruments TI/99 4A and it had cost $299. I was in the gifted program at school, and we were studying computers, (first generation Apple computers.) My parents supported my decision to get the computer, so I’m betting they chipped in something toward the purchase, as probably did my American grandmother, otherwise... well, anyway...
Suffice it to say, computers have been a long time love of mine.
Had I more skill in mathematics, I probably would have gone into the field of computer science rather than writing. But, I seem to completely lack the math gene, much as I love science and computers. (What an odd combination...)
(My son is very lucky that my husband’s genetic material filled in for where my genes are so obviously lacking. My son’s teachers tell me math is Alex’s best subject. Hooray! Perhaps he can start balancing the checkbook for me...)
My childhood consisted of one computer after another, as I could afford them, through babysitting, and saving up any and all money given to me by relatives for Christmas and my birthday. By college, I was already on my third or fourth computer. It was 1987, and I headed off to college with a first generation all in one “portable” hand-built by my oldest brother Mike, complete with a thermal printer. The thing was so heavy it took like two people to lift it, but it was all enclosed in one unit, with a monochrome screen, so you could “transport” it... (At the time, his company I think was designing things to fit on U.S. military submarines, and he had given me one of his proto-type units-- a very cool going-away to college gift. The very next year, he built me another, even more updated computer, and began teaching me what the insides of computers looked like and how to take them apart...)
Ah, big brothers are the best...
Yes, I have had a very long love affair with computers.
When I first moved out to Silicon Valley over ten years ago, I think I spent more of my paycheck at Fry’s Electronics, then I did at Lucky Supermarket. I just wanted to buy computer parts and build... (I made my fair share of mistakes, shorting out power supplies, and wiring things wrong. It was trial and error, that’s for sure...) I had a boring job as a Marketing Manager for a CD-ROM server company by day, so I amused myself at night trying to build the ultimate super-computer. Ah, good times, good times...
And, that brings us up to present day...
Or, to September of 2007...
When my Mac G5 started to do strange things in September, I began to get annoyed...
The “spinning beachball of death” started to appear more and more often. I had to re-boot much more frequently, which is a Windows thing.
How annoying.
And, I’m not sure what drove the stake into the coffin. Was it because I had to download some drivers for my son’s Windows Internet modem, and used my Mac to do it? But, I downloaded them directly to a flash card, so it should not have affected the Mac. Surely some Windows/Mac conflict could not have been so deadly...
The only other thing that happened that particular day was a routine download from Apple of new security drivers, and updates to iTunes, and Quicktime and such...
Yes, yes, whatever, so I accepted the download...
And, all of a sudden, my keyboard froze up, but only the letters A-Z, and only in certain programs...
How bizarre...
And, only when I logged in under my main administrator name. If I create a new username, all of the keys worked. So, there was nothing wrong with my keyboard...
But, then all of Microsoft Office for Mac stopped working. Every time I tried to launch Microsoft Word for Mac, it said: “We’re sorry. The program has quit unexpectedly. Would you like to send an error message?”
Then, iMovie would launch, but quit unexpectedly after 90 seconds: “We’re sorry. The program has quit unexpectedly. Would you like to send an error message?”
(Hence, the reason there has not been a single: “Fibromyalgia Coffee Break update” since Thanksgiving.)
Oh, crap, this is bad.
So, I went on to the message boards, started to read if others were having similar problems, and yes, yes, some people were experiencing the weird “A-Z” thing. One poor fellow had his keyboard lock up in the middle of giving a presentation! But, they were all on MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Not one of them was a G5...
Odd...
But, I tried the same fix, reinstalling the operating system...
(Well, OK, first I had to find my original install discs, which I COULD NOT FIND...)
Odd... I never lose stuff like that... I tore the house apart for ten days... Literally... I pulled open every desk drawer, every closet, ever cabinet in the garage... It was Spring cleaning early this year.
I even went over to the church, because I had worked on their G4 at one point, and brought over my packet of discs. I did find my Mac Microsoft Word discs over there, but not my original install discs.
Where could they be?!
Never found the discs. Asked my Pastor at the church for his, as we both got our Mac G5s the same exact week, two years ago. I knew we had the same exact model and everything. But, his office is in a total disarray because they totally took everything out to paint things. He was as lost as I was.
So, I headed down the street to another Pastor, friends of mine who belong to another church up in Morgan Hill. He’s a total Mac guru. I asked him for some discs. He had just the version of Tiger Mac OS 10.4 that I needed. He told me there was no hurry in returning the disc, and wished me luck in fixing it.
I thanked him, and headed home, and spent the next ten days, begging, pleading, researching, and losing sleep over the darned thing. I could not get the operating system to reinstall.
My dear Mac G5 was out of warranty. So, I had thought a call to tech support would cost a fortune. I did not splurge for the extended warranty when I bought the machine, because that costs a fortune. My husband saw how much this whole situation was paining me, and finally said: “Just take it in to the Mac store, and at least get an estimate.”
So, I called the nearest store, which is at one of those mega-malls, up in San Jose. Or, at least I thought that’s what I was calling. I wanted to just set up an appointment with the “Mac Genius Bar” to have it looked at, and see if I’d have to drain my bank account to get it fixed.
But, somehow I ended up Mac Tech Support, and they talked with me for 90 minutes. At anytime, I expected them to ask me for a credit card, and charge me some ungodly sum for their help, but they never did.
And, it looked at first, like the problem may have even been fixed. We held down four keys at once, and reset the “PRAM.”
Didn’t even know there was such a think. I knew about RAM, of course, and SDRAM, but PRAM?
I got off the phone, and began re-installing the iLife suite, as the tech had recommended.
It re-installed easily enough, but two minutes into recording a video blog in iMovie-- blam!
The application quit unexpectedly, and there appeared the...
.... oh, yes, the spinning beach ball of death.
(sigh)
My G5 is now sitting in a corner by the fishtank, looking so forlorn, and about as useful as the fishtank.
It looks very pretty, but does not do very much all day.
I am going to take it into the Mac Genius Bar on Thursday anyway, maybe wear something low cut and slinky, hope that I get a male "genius" and not a female "genius."
Oh, who am I fooling? I don’t have any feminine wiles. Or, at least I don’t think I do, and I don’t even think I own anything slinky. Maybe I can just beg. Or, cry. There have been times over the past month when I have been at the point of tears over the darned thing.
Perhaps I can convince them to look at it without charging me an outrageous fee. Maybe, they can at least tell me what it wrong with it, and how much it will cost to fix it.
Someone told me it can cost as much as $300 just to have it analyzed to find out what is wrong with it. Ugggggh!
Between myself and my friend down the street, we have tried, reinstalling the operating system, reinstalling iLife, putting in a new hard drive, pulling out the RAM, putting it back in, putting in entirely different RAM, booting the computer off of another system using a firewire cable, resetting the PRAM...
My friend went to MacWorld in San Francisco last week and discussed it with numerous people there, and they are all as perplexed as we are. He said it’s either a motherboard issue, or I simply got a “lemon G5.” He did here that this particular model of the G5, the very last model to come out before the ones with the Intel G5 chip, were a whole generation of “lemons.”
Great. The first ever Mac I ever purchase and it turns out the be “the lemon generation.”
I am so disappointed.
The machine is not even two years old.
It should not have died.
It’s death spiral started at age 20 months! That is just wrong, on so many levels. It has never been moved, and sat on a clean, well-ventilated, smoke-free environment the entire time-- never been dropped, no static shock, and its on a very expensive surge protector. I use the “power save” feature to power it down in the evenings, just like the manual says, to extend the life of the machine.
So, why, oh why, did it die?
My Mac G5 died
Sunday, January 20, 2008
