WHY YOU SHOULD BUY A MAC: Lots of fist shaking at the sky and impotent snarls of utter rage go here
Oh, the saga continues. I am still in Borkenated Puter Hell.
I get a call froma chirpy young thang who informs me that yey, puter is healed, praise Jebus! Oh, by the way, do I want ALL MY STUFF back on my computer?
Me: Halleju--what the fuck say you now? OF COURSE I want ALL MY STUFF back on my computer! Whyfor you ask me such a thing?
Tweety: Oh, um, ah. Let me get the tech for you. Plz you now hold.
Me: No, wait, not THE HOLD! Noooooooo....*clik* *horribleness of indescribable torment involving muzak Puddle Of Mudd and muzak Biff Naked and muzak Phil Collins*
After a half hour of this, my mobile phone becomes HOT LIKE LAVA and actually burns my face.
Me: Hello, I am still here. Why are you tormenting me with the muzak? Hello? Hellloooooo?!! Oh my farking ghod, I hate you people.
It is at this point the Sprint Gods take pity on me and make my mobile die.
Several hours later, I call back. Still angry, but so far I have been very, very calm and understanding. I manage to remain civil only through SHEER FORCE OF WILL.
Tech: Y HELLO THAR.
Me: Give me puter with my stuffs on it.
Tech: No can give you puter with stuffs on it.
Me: The hell not, you say?
Tech: You didn't tell us to preserve your stuffs.
Me: I DID SO! *flames shoot out of eyeballs and engulf my room*
Tech: Excuse plz, I will go read notes. ... Hokay, I am returned now. Uh. We will restore your stuffs.
Me: GOOD.
Tech: Except not your programs.
Me: WHAT!?!
Tech: We can't do that.
Me: I DID NOT ASK YOU TO REMOVE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Tech: So sorry, our bad.
Me: I PAID Geek Squad $300 in January to transfer all the crap off of my 98 laptop onto this BRAND NEW XP laptop. I PAID for this already. You have just UNDONE what I already paid you guys to do less than six weeks ago.
Tech: Um. We weren't supposed to have done that.
Me: BUT. YOU. DID.
Tech: That was wrong, we should not have.
Me: I PAID for this service because I have some damaged disks and a lost Photoshop disk. Your tech got into my computer innards and verified the serial number. I only use Photoshop 369 times a week for my GRAD SCHOOL CLASSES.
Tech: So sorry. The 1-800 number lied to you, so he did that out of courtesy, he wasn't supposed to.
Me: So I'm getting back a doorstop, with my entire livelihood and gradschool toolset on an external drive.
Tech: Yes. $800 dollars, plz. You pay now.
Me: *head explodes into shards of radioactive confetti* I ALREADY PAID YOU, you expletive! You don't even start work until you get paid!!
Tech: My mistake, this is true. You can pick up your machine tomorrow. I will be here in person to tell you we can't return your laptop in the same condition you gave it to us. Program-wise.
So there you have it. I will have to reinstall all my farking software. I'm on dial-up, so anything free, mostly utilities and other similar stuff, I got via Download.com or 68 other different sites, most of which probably don't exist anymore, will have to be re-downloaded. Slowly and painfully. As for Illustrator and Photoshop? I DO NOT HAVE WORKING DISKS. So I call Adobe, hoping to God I was smart enough to register the damn things. I've only bought Photoshop THREE TIMES now. Adobe has no record I exist. I am SKROOD.
So I call up my college bud and rant and moan and he suggests calling mutual friends who might have the disks I need.
SEE WHAT THEY HAVE REDUCED ME TO?!
I didn't want to resort to this. I wanted the shit I paid for to work. I didn't want shit someone else paid for, I wanted MY shit. As it is, I may still be out of luck, but if not, I will have top of the line new versions of this shit. Because the alternative is to spend $500 to buy Photoshop for the FOURTH time. And I am tired of throwing money at this computer. I am DONE.
All I want is to have the shit I paid for working. If I knew how to get it working from off the external, and to transfer it properly, I wouldn't be screaming my head off.
MY NEXT COMPUTER WILL BE A MAC. Swapping OSes a few years ago has caused me nothing but pain and aggravation. My Macs NEVER caused me problems. NEVER. My PCs? One goddamned thing after another. It never ends. Why did I do it, when I love Macs more anyway? Because I had the grandiose idea that I might make money doing consulting work for people, and most people have PCs. And when I DID do consulting work? ALL BUT ONE CLIENT HAD A FARGING MAC. The gods hate me.
Seriously, I have fucking had it. No more money on that computer. NO MORE. It has cost me more than I earned last year, in total. Fucking money pit.
So. Wish me luck. I require the tools I PAID FOR, in some cases MULTIPLE TIMES, to work. If that means I have to become a shoulder-parrot-wearing eye-patched menace to society, just this once, well, THEY PUT MY BACK TO THE WALL. Class starts in two days.
File-sharing Sims 2 things that should be free in the first place? No twinge of guilt there. File-sharing music MP3s, which I then use, per fair use, to broadcast live and promote the artists? No guilt there. I haven't even done that in months. Too busy, and I have a large enough collection (understatement) to carry on with the radio show without new shinies. Also, the new music director apparently shares my tastes, which is a farging miracle, considering what his peers like ("plz you play creed now 4 me, whut is a britpop anywayz?"), so we even got in stuff like The Good The Bad The Queen. Or whatever it is called, I am angry. I can't remember details like that. PHOTOSHOP WANKED, I AM PISSED ORF ROYALLY, NO RESEARCH OR THINK HARD NAO 4 ME, NO THENK U OK.
Getting some fellow student to loan me her mega-expensive disks and installing them on my laptop? MEGA GUILT. And if she wants something I have, that will only be fair.
But goddamit, I have tried to resolve this every way I can think of. And I'm out of other ideas. And I'm running out of time.
I wonder what joys of borkenness I will get back today. WIll I have to reinstall The Sims? Oh yes. (4 hours) How about Microsoft Office? (Yes.) Macromedia suite? (Yes.) Every goddamned thing? (Yes, yes, yes.) Will my artwork, research papers, files, Sims downloads, MP3s, etc., be available? (Mmmmmmmmaybe.) Will I have Internet Access? (God only knows. THAT will be happy fun times. I will have to load Earthlink or AOL to get Internet access in order to redownload my ISP software, and then fight with my ISP do I don't get double-charged, and pray it actually works. Because I went through that Hell in January. And I never did get the accelerator bonus program I had before all that drama, so I'm paying for fast dial-up and I only have turtle dial-up, but my brain had a meltdown at some point dealing with them and their precious warez-protection crap, PLZ TO LOOK AT MY GODDAMMED ACCOUNT NOW OK?!!, and I was lucky to get the connection I already paid for working at all.)
If I were any angrier, there'd be nothing left of me because I would spontaneously combust. Just a heap of very angy ashes, looking perplexed, in the middle of my bed. (I am too angry to sit still and type this. I am using doorstop-craptop on BED, where I can't flail around in fury too much and break shit.)
What pisses me off most is how I cannot apply my intellect tothe problem and fix it. If I had enough time, MAYBE. But I don't have time to learn how to safely deal with registry crap and program innards and PC nonsense. I was a Mac Whisperer back in the day, but PCs and I merely have a truce. I promise not to sledgehammer them into dust, they promise not to eat ALLLLLL my files.
PC: Oh yes! And I'll only get a FEW little viruses every now and then. Nothing too bad. Consider them a summer cold. And random corruption and fake hard drive failure and Windows being pissanty? Oh, sorry. The truce. Forgot about that. Please don't turn me into a pile of plastic goo. I am too expensive. Perhaps you should go outside and get some air. Stop glaring at me. Eugene, put down that axe. Srsly. Here, have a cat macro. We're friends again, yes? Okay? ... You're scaring me. Listen: I AM VERY EXPENSIVE AND YOU ARE POOR. ... Heh. I knew THAT would work. You are my bitch, human. Suck it.
You have to imagine the Angry Eyebrows and fist waving. Just be assured they exist.
I am a most unhappy camper.
ETA: Just turned on telly and there's an Ozzy Osbourne documentary special. I don't know why, as Black Sabbath has never been in my Top Ten, but I have this bizarre affection for the crazy man. I've found him amusing for decades ('cause I'm old, but not as old as Oz, thank goodness). Even took pictures one Hallowe'en, while dressed as something else, making OZZY CRAZY FACE. Uncanny resemblance, especially with Halowe'en hairsprayed 80's hair accident I had at the time. If I had my computer with camera built in, I would totally make The Face for you. Because I have bedhead and am manky, which is the perfect time to make Ozzy Face. I totally pwn at this. Just add eyeliner and GRAWRL. I need a shower, though, so if/when I get my laptop back today, I will no longer have the requisite bed snarls and bad mood.
Why this weird love for Ozzy? I dunno. He seems like a little kid playing dress-up or something. Like, ooh, I'm so bad, watch me raise the Devil, MOAR MOAR MOAR, phear meh! But so not scary, ever. He amuses me. He's a human cartoon. I do actually own a sh!tload of Black Sabbath vinyl, but that is because my houses are always where Unloved Vinyl Comes To Retire. I own a hell of a lot of ASS-KICKING HEAVY METALZ, really. It's all so cartoony to me, not at all EVIL and SCARY. Men in eyeliner. Not frightening. If there's any backwards masking on, say, KISS albums, it probably says EAT UR VEGGIES GO 2 SKULE MILK IZ GUD 4 U HAV U ACCEPTED JEBUS CHRIST AZ UR PERSONAL SAVIOUR? Wouldn't that be all ironic and, you know, truly backwards? Heh. (Actually, spare me the info about backwards masking and sublimnials being a pile of poo, because I've written research papers about this subject. I am being a goofball.)
Maybe I should put some on before fetching the computer. MOAR MOAR, I'm running wif de debbil! I am iron man! Smoke on the water, fire in the sky! Kick out the jams, muthafuckas! Mama weer all krazee now! *flails* *headbang*
I don't know that my heart could handle the added adrenaline right now, though.
Oh, now it's Gene Simmons. One of a thousand kickass Jewish rock dudes. Yey for rockin' Jews! My music collection would totally suck without them. I *heart* my kickass Jewish musicians. Oh! Oh! Is his son not the cutest thang ever? Can I have one? He's also funny. I am a dirty old lady. But I promise not to touch his no-no places! I just want to watch him being cute and stuff. Is that allowed? Can I do that?
Of course, Gene's apparently remaking Prodigy's "Firestarter", but they have not mentioned the Prodigy at all. Srsly., similar lyrics, same samples, same tune. I don't have the same irrational affection for any KISS people that I have for Ozzy. That's probably good.
I'm going to go make Ozzy faces at myself in the bathroom to cheer myself up (GRR CRAZY TRAIN GRR BITE BAT GRR GRR! I'M TOTALLY MAD I SAY, MAD! ROAR ROAR! MOAR! *hee* *sporfle*) by being a big dork, and then I'm going to have a shower. Then...into the fray. Maybe I will be in a less homicidal mood after some food and a shower.
Yey for Brummie musicians with funny GRAWF faces.
I get a call froma chirpy young thang who informs me that yey, puter is healed, praise Jebus! Oh, by the way, do I want ALL MY STUFF back on my computer?
Me: Halleju--what the fuck say you now? OF COURSE I want ALL MY STUFF back on my computer! Whyfor you ask me such a thing?
Tweety: Oh, um, ah. Let me get the tech for you. Plz you now hold.
Me: No, wait, not THE HOLD! Noooooooo....*clik* *horribleness of indescribable torment involving muzak Puddle Of Mudd and muzak Biff Naked and muzak Phil Collins*
After a half hour of this, my mobile phone becomes HOT LIKE LAVA and actually burns my face.
Me: Hello, I am still here. Why are you tormenting me with the muzak? Hello? Hellloooooo?!! Oh my farking ghod, I hate you people.
It is at this point the Sprint Gods take pity on me and make my mobile die.
Several hours later, I call back. Still angry, but so far I have been very, very calm and understanding. I manage to remain civil only through SHEER FORCE OF WILL.
Tech: Y HELLO THAR.
Me: Give me puter with my stuffs on it.
Tech: No can give you puter with stuffs on it.
Me: The hell not, you say?
Tech: You didn't tell us to preserve your stuffs.
Me: I DID SO! *flames shoot out of eyeballs and engulf my room*
Tech: Excuse plz, I will go read notes. ... Hokay, I am returned now. Uh. We will restore your stuffs.
Me: GOOD.
Tech: Except not your programs.
Me: WHAT!?!
Tech: We can't do that.
Me: I DID NOT ASK YOU TO REMOVE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Tech: So sorry, our bad.
Me: I PAID Geek Squad $300 in January to transfer all the crap off of my 98 laptop onto this BRAND NEW XP laptop. I PAID for this already. You have just UNDONE what I already paid you guys to do less than six weeks ago.
Tech: Um. We weren't supposed to have done that.
Me: BUT. YOU. DID.
Tech: That was wrong, we should not have.
Me: I PAID for this service because I have some damaged disks and a lost Photoshop disk. Your tech got into my computer innards and verified the serial number. I only use Photoshop 369 times a week for my GRAD SCHOOL CLASSES.
Tech: So sorry. The 1-800 number lied to you, so he did that out of courtesy, he wasn't supposed to.
Me: So I'm getting back a doorstop, with my entire livelihood and gradschool toolset on an external drive.
Tech: Yes. $800 dollars, plz. You pay now.
Me: *head explodes into shards of radioactive confetti* I ALREADY PAID YOU, you expletive! You don't even start work until you get paid!!
Tech: My mistake, this is true. You can pick up your machine tomorrow. I will be here in person to tell you we can't return your laptop in the same condition you gave it to us. Program-wise.
So there you have it. I will have to reinstall all my farking software. I'm on dial-up, so anything free, mostly utilities and other similar stuff, I got via Download.com or 68 other different sites, most of which probably don't exist anymore, will have to be re-downloaded. Slowly and painfully. As for Illustrator and Photoshop? I DO NOT HAVE WORKING DISKS. So I call Adobe, hoping to God I was smart enough to register the damn things. I've only bought Photoshop THREE TIMES now. Adobe has no record I exist. I am SKROOD.
So I call up my college bud and rant and moan and he suggests calling mutual friends who might have the disks I need.
SEE WHAT THEY HAVE REDUCED ME TO?!
I didn't want to resort to this. I wanted the shit I paid for to work. I didn't want shit someone else paid for, I wanted MY shit. As it is, I may still be out of luck, but if not, I will have top of the line new versions of this shit. Because the alternative is to spend $500 to buy Photoshop for the FOURTH time. And I am tired of throwing money at this computer. I am DONE.
All I want is to have the shit I paid for working. If I knew how to get it working from off the external, and to transfer it properly, I wouldn't be screaming my head off.
MY NEXT COMPUTER WILL BE A MAC. Swapping OSes a few years ago has caused me nothing but pain and aggravation. My Macs NEVER caused me problems. NEVER. My PCs? One goddamned thing after another. It never ends. Why did I do it, when I love Macs more anyway? Because I had the grandiose idea that I might make money doing consulting work for people, and most people have PCs. And when I DID do consulting work? ALL BUT ONE CLIENT HAD A FARGING MAC. The gods hate me.
Seriously, I have fucking had it. No more money on that computer. NO MORE. It has cost me more than I earned last year, in total. Fucking money pit.
So. Wish me luck. I require the tools I PAID FOR, in some cases MULTIPLE TIMES, to work. If that means I have to become a shoulder-parrot-wearing eye-patched menace to society, just this once, well, THEY PUT MY BACK TO THE WALL. Class starts in two days.
File-sharing Sims 2 things that should be free in the first place? No twinge of guilt there. File-sharing music MP3s, which I then use, per fair use, to broadcast live and promote the artists? No guilt there. I haven't even done that in months. Too busy, and I have a large enough collection (understatement) to carry on with the radio show without new shinies. Also, the new music director apparently shares my tastes, which is a farging miracle, considering what his peers like ("plz you play creed now 4 me, whut is a britpop anywayz?"), so we even got in stuff like The Good The Bad The Queen. Or whatever it is called, I am angry. I can't remember details like that. PHOTOSHOP WANKED, I AM PISSED ORF ROYALLY, NO RESEARCH OR THINK HARD NAO 4 ME, NO THENK U OK.
Getting some fellow student to loan me her mega-expensive disks and installing them on my laptop? MEGA GUILT. And if she wants something I have, that will only be fair.
But goddamit, I have tried to resolve this every way I can think of. And I'm out of other ideas. And I'm running out of time.
I wonder what joys of borkenness I will get back today. WIll I have to reinstall The Sims? Oh yes. (4 hours) How about Microsoft Office? (Yes.) Macromedia suite? (Yes.) Every goddamned thing? (Yes, yes, yes.) Will my artwork, research papers, files, Sims downloads, MP3s, etc., be available? (Mmmmmmmmaybe.) Will I have Internet Access? (God only knows. THAT will be happy fun times. I will have to load Earthlink or AOL to get Internet access in order to redownload my ISP software, and then fight with my ISP do I don't get double-charged, and pray it actually works. Because I went through that Hell in January. And I never did get the accelerator bonus program I had before all that drama, so I'm paying for fast dial-up and I only have turtle dial-up, but my brain had a meltdown at some point dealing with them and their precious warez-protection crap, PLZ TO LOOK AT MY GODDAMMED ACCOUNT NOW OK?!!, and I was lucky to get the connection I already paid for working at all.)
If I were any angrier, there'd be nothing left of me because I would spontaneously combust. Just a heap of very angy ashes, looking perplexed, in the middle of my bed. (I am too angry to sit still and type this. I am using doorstop-craptop on BED, where I can't flail around in fury too much and break shit.)
What pisses me off most is how I cannot apply my intellect tothe problem and fix it. If I had enough time, MAYBE. But I don't have time to learn how to safely deal with registry crap and program innards and PC nonsense. I was a Mac Whisperer back in the day, but PCs and I merely have a truce. I promise not to sledgehammer them into dust, they promise not to eat ALLLLLL my files.
PC: Oh yes! And I'll only get a FEW little viruses every now and then. Nothing too bad. Consider them a summer cold. And random corruption and fake hard drive failure and Windows being pissanty? Oh, sorry. The truce. Forgot about that. Please don't turn me into a pile of plastic goo. I am too expensive. Perhaps you should go outside and get some air. Stop glaring at me. Eugene, put down that axe. Srsly. Here, have a cat macro. We're friends again, yes? Okay? ... You're scaring me. Listen: I AM VERY EXPENSIVE AND YOU ARE POOR. ... Heh. I knew THAT would work. You are my bitch, human. Suck it.
You have to imagine the Angry Eyebrows and fist waving. Just be assured they exist.
I am a most unhappy camper.
ETA: Just turned on telly and there's an Ozzy Osbourne documentary special. I don't know why, as Black Sabbath has never been in my Top Ten, but I have this bizarre affection for the crazy man. I've found him amusing for decades ('cause I'm old, but not as old as Oz, thank goodness). Even took pictures one Hallowe'en, while dressed as something else, making OZZY CRAZY FACE. Uncanny resemblance, especially with Halowe'en hairsprayed 80's hair accident I had at the time. If I had my computer with camera built in, I would totally make The Face for you. Because I have bedhead and am manky, which is the perfect time to make Ozzy Face. I totally pwn at this. Just add eyeliner and GRAWRL. I need a shower, though, so if/when I get my laptop back today, I will no longer have the requisite bed snarls and bad mood.
Why this weird love for Ozzy? I dunno. He seems like a little kid playing dress-up or something. Like, ooh, I'm so bad, watch me raise the Devil, MOAR MOAR MOAR, phear meh! But so not scary, ever. He amuses me. He's a human cartoon. I do actually own a sh!tload of Black Sabbath vinyl, but that is because my houses are always where Unloved Vinyl Comes To Retire. I own a hell of a lot of ASS-KICKING HEAVY METALZ, really. It's all so cartoony to me, not at all EVIL and SCARY. Men in eyeliner. Not frightening. If there's any backwards masking on, say, KISS albums, it probably says EAT UR VEGGIES GO 2 SKULE MILK IZ GUD 4 U HAV U ACCEPTED JEBUS CHRIST AZ UR PERSONAL SAVIOUR? Wouldn't that be all ironic and, you know, truly backwards? Heh. (Actually, spare me the info about backwards masking and sublimnials being a pile of poo, because I've written research papers about this subject. I am being a goofball.)
Maybe I should put some on before fetching the computer. MOAR MOAR, I'm running wif de debbil! I am iron man! Smoke on the water, fire in the sky! Kick out the jams, muthafuckas! Mama weer all krazee now! *flails* *headbang*
I don't know that my heart could handle the added adrenaline right now, though.
Oh, now it's Gene Simmons. One of a thousand kickass Jewish rock dudes. Yey for rockin' Jews! My music collection would totally suck without them. I *heart* my kickass Jewish musicians. Oh! Oh! Is his son not the cutest thang ever? Can I have one? He's also funny. I am a dirty old lady. But I promise not to touch his no-no places! I just want to watch him being cute and stuff. Is that allowed? Can I do that?
Of course, Gene's apparently remaking Prodigy's "Firestarter", but they have not mentioned the Prodigy at all. Srsly., similar lyrics, same samples, same tune. I don't have the same irrational affection for any KISS people that I have for Ozzy. That's probably good.
I'm going to go make Ozzy faces at myself in the bathroom to cheer myself up (GRR CRAZY TRAIN GRR BITE BAT GRR GRR! I'M TOTALLY MAD I SAY, MAD! ROAR ROAR! MOAR! *hee* *sporfle*) by being a big dork, and then I'm going to have a shower. Then...into the fray. Maybe I will be in a less homicidal mood after some food and a shower.
Yey for Brummie musicians with funny GRAWF faces.