Tech wars

Anyone have an old T-Mobile phone they're not using? Or an old iPhone (3Gs or newer)—I can unlock and use my T-mobile SIM in? Cellphone no longer holds a charge & the new pay-as-you-go model at Costco is primitive. New battery is nearly the price of a new phone. What's with that? It's a BATTERY fergawdsakes!!!

I'm reaching crisis point meltdown with my electronic gear all at once—and duct tape will not work. PPC iMac—code name: 'Ol Lazarus, Neil's Wind Tunnel G4—dead power supply (kaBOOM!); my main MacBook has one dead hard drive—tinkering with it now. 

Last summer's brownouts finally coming home to roost. Truth be told, I can't believe I kept these old  discarded Macs alive this long. The G4 I souped up for Neil was 1 GHz MDD (mirrored door drive—looks like a caddy grill on front) code name: Windtunnel, not one of the older models. So it was special—and fast. And it has SCSI ports—for my old Nikon film scanner. All this fuss over keeping old tech alive so I can scan some negatives. But with the G4, I think I have to call it quits. It went kabloom Literally.  It’s dead, Jim. Time to hit Craigslist.

I'm a feckin’ miracle worker at resurrecting old Macs, but when the power supply goes kabloom, and smoke issues forth! Not much I can do. Except to back off. So glad I was wearing glasses at the time.

Why my trusty MacBook also had to enter into the electronic fray of the obsolete and dead Mac pile at the same time with a failed hard drive, is a mystery. Bad timing, or that brownout is wreaking havoc. So now we really are Macless. And hard drives are now so shitty they don't even last 2 years—my second sucky Hitachi drive in 2 years—was under warranty first time around—is now toast. Solid state drives are more reliable. Wish they weren't so pricy.

I desperately need a working MacBook for the CPITS Symposium, and to take writing intensive with Camlle Dungy this weekend (I very nearly made my goal—fill the beds, and bring in 60 people for Saturday. Only 12 more to go...)

My emergency Craiglist find is a deranged headless MacBook Pro (no working screen, DVD drive, or internal sound, plus a dead battery—hey it was cheap—the previous owner must've learned skateboarding with it). But it fires up, and with a lot of coaxing, is serving as a motherboard hub—everything is peripheral! Think: e-octopus. It took some serious working, and a few miracles, not to mention, an external screen, keyboard, speakers and DVD drive, but I have a working Mac. Mopping up the software mess now. The MacBook Pro, though the same age as my MacBook, is infinitely faster. I was able to get some work done, and managed to fill the last of the beds for the CPITS conference.

Tech wars continued: Managed to get a tiny old hard drive working in my old MacBook 1.1—it fired right up, but updating it from 2008 is another issue. Still fussing and fighting with it hours later. I was able to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, via an external DVD drive (the internal drive also went south)—but Snow Leopard just won't take. And Leopard is obsolete. Augh.

How did I ever function with a 60GB hard drive? Had to jettison most of my music and photos in order to upgrade. Poor ting sounds like a helicopter with the old hard drive. And it’s warmer than a hot tin cat on the lap too. Research on a solid state drive is in order. I need a new hard drive. At least I now have a clean system to clone! We'll eek another year of use out of you yet, Mr. MacBook 1.1!

To make matters worse, my cellphone fell off the wagon, it needs a long, cool ele-drinkypoo every 12 hours or it beeps piteously at me like an orphaned kitten. Then it chirps like a bird when it's well-fed. What happened, an electronic pulse? And it’s so old, I can’t find a battery for it. 

Just received an extraordinary care package from poet Kathleene K West in New Mexico—a very fancy T-Mobile phone and myriad tchatchkiis. Go raibh maith agat! All she wants is to be reimbursed for postage. Deal.

Still in computer purgatory... So I salvaged my old Macbook after the HDD died, with an old HDD from 2008—upgrading it was, well, pure hell. Do computers also have Mercury retrograde days? I managed to get it working again but, it's too old. All was swell until I OK'd the combo update (on both MBs). What was I thinking? I couldn’t leave well enough alone, now, could I? I had to go and update both MacBooks and now I have to MacBricks.

I think our DSL is so slow, the software was corrupted as it happened TWICE. Due to a series of flukes (MBP install disk was in DVD), I was able to save the old MacBook—and install Snow Leopard—probably b/c the combo update stall had thrashed Leopard, that it had to load. Never could get it to work before. So I'm half-way there. But the MacBook Pro is another story. In geek purgatory. But I really need an intel core duo 2 Mac (that #2 is important!) to access the iCloud. At least I was able to save my Apple email account with the now daid MacBookPro (MBP). Well, I’m still Mackless on all fronts. I’m afraid that MacBook resurrection 2.0 is on hiatus until after the conference.

Note Bene: I bought a portable external hard drive at Costco and managed to run the ailing Macbook off the external drive, then update the combo OS update at IONs Institute, as they had faster WiFi. Thinking outside the boxes’ box is exhausting. But, success! Now to remedy that MacBook Pro still stuck in limbolandia when I return. Having the combo update on the external drive saved my bacon. Let the clone wars commence.