items from the mind of an idiot savant

not fit for print

Hey Mac Genius guy! Yes, you, Jason White from the Apple Store at the Glendale Galleria. You said you would call me on Monday and let me know what’s up with my repair order. Its now Tuesday, and I haven’t heard from you.

I called the store to see what’s up. After traversing the maze of Apple’s terrible automated phone system I was magically transferred to the store.[Just for shits and giggles, later I'll record a call into the store to show you how lame the phone menus are.] It rang for quite some time before someone answered.

Juan answered, and told me Mac Genius Jason White was not in today. I asked Juan to look up the status of my repair. Juan put me on hold while he looked it up. Then Aaron picked up the phone. I don’t know who Aaron is, but obviously he is more qualified than Juan to answer the phone.

Aaron let me know that the replacement part was ordered Monday. The replacement part should be in Wednessday. I asked if I should just come in, or if I should wait for someone to confirm that the part was in. Aaron told me that someone would call and let me know that the part had arrived. That’s fair enough.

Aaron also informed me the Mac Genius Jason White does not work on Monday or Tuesday. I found this odd since Mac Genius Jason White told me he would call me on Monday and update me on the status of the replacement parts. I thought that was very nice of him to do. I figured since I am now a ProCare member, this was just how they treat special people.

Well Mac Genius Jason White didn’t call. I don’t feel special. In fact I’m rather concerned that either:

• Mac Genius Jason White is an idiot and forgot that he wasn’t working on Monday, and couldn’t call me.
• or that Mac Genius Jason White took my personal information home so that he can call me on his day off.

Either way, both ideas are ridiculous and unacceptable. I would have rather that people just not promise me things they aren’t 100% sure they can/will do.

I finally had some time to tend to my PowerBook lower RAM slot failure. My good friend Niels Eike and I swung by the Apple Store @ the Glendale Galeria Friday after work.

We showed up at about 7pm and headed straight for the Genius Bar. I was told to put my name on sign-in sheet. There was an iBook at the end of bar set-up just for digital sign-in. I was also told that I could sign-in from any computer on display anywhere in the store. Someone was already in line in front of me waiting to sign-in, so I walked across the store to sign-in at another system. I clicked on the Genius Bar logo, and crashed the first system I tried. I moved to the next system and after filling out the sign-in form, I got a Web server error. I guess I crashed the Web application server. I headed back to the bar to sign-in on that iBook since it was available.

The genius bar actually has a nice sign-in system, when it works. After you put your name on the list and give a brief description of your issue, your first name and last initial are displayed on a large screen behind the Genius Bar. You see the list of all the people waiting in line to see a genius and you can see your name on the list and how far away you are from having your number called. They also give you approximate wait times and all that jazz.

After about waiting 30 minutes, my name was called.

Even though I wrote my complaint down in the sign-in form, I was asked what the problem was. I explained my story. I expected that the [let's call him a technician, since I'm insulted by the implication the "genius" is superior to me in any way] technician would want to verify my story and make site that the issue was a result of user error or anything was not Apple’s fault.

Jason White, the technician, looked at the System Profiler to see that no memory was in the lower slot. Jason then shut down my laptop and opened the RAM cavity to make sure I actually had memory installed in the lower slot. As expected, he fetched some replacement RAM in order to test that it was not faulty memory. He put the replacement RAM in booted up the system. Sure enough, the System Profiler reported no memory in the lower slot. This should have been enough to validate my claim, but Jason was not satisfied.

He tried another set of RAM. Same result. And a third set of RAM, with the same result. This should have been frustration enough for me to act out in some way, but I didn’t. The whole time I was making casual small talk, and being patient. Niels was starting to get a bit antsy. He walked away to get away from the mess, and blow off some steam. It was getting late, and our friend Gerald was due to meet up back at Niels’ place sometime between 8 and 9. It was just after 8, and Gerald doesn’t have a cell phone, so we couldn’t tell him we were running late. Niels was calling around to see how he could get word to Gerald.

BACK TO JASON!

Mac Genius Jason White finally acknowledged the faulty hardware. [I think it might be a bit annoying and condescending if from now on I sarcastically refer to him as "Mac Genius Jason White"].

Mac Genius Jason White explains Apple would cover the repair under warranty and that I have two options:

1. I can have them send my PowerBook to the repair center in Texas. This option would take about a week for the powerbook to get there, get repaired, and get back.
2. I could purchase ProCare for $99 for 1 year, and that would make me eligible for in store repairs.

I use my PowerBook every day at work, and It’s not really ideal for me to be without for a week or so. Since my PowerBook was still functional, I asked Mac Genius Jason White if I bought the ProCare could I keep my PowerBook while the part was on order. He said that was cool, and that he would call me on Monday to let me know when the parts came in. I could keep working normally, and I would bring it in for repair, and they would fix it, and return it within 24 hours. That’s kind of a sweet deal when you think about it, except that it cost me $99+tax.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t just getting completely ripped off in having to pay this $99+tax. I asked Mac Genius Jason White a few questions.

Mac Genius Jason White sold me the ProCare, gave me my ProCare Card, and order the replacement motherboard. He gave me his business card, and wrote my repair order number on the back. Mac Genius Jason White told me he would call me on Monday and let me know when the parts come in and when I could drop off my PowerBook.]

I EAGERLY AWAIT YOUR CALL Mac Genius Jason White!

It had been almost 3 years, and I was looking to replace my aging PowerBook G4 15″ 667MHz. I was waiting & hoping that Apple would release a PowerBook G5 at Macworld Expo, but instead there was a respectable spec. upgrade and price drop to the PowerBook G4.

I ordered an 15″ PowerBook G4 from Small Dog Electronics back in January 2005. I actually order it a week or so before the model refresh was announced. I had to wait until the announcement was made before my order was canceled and I had to place a new order. All in all, it was about 4 weeks from my original order date before I received the new PowerBook.

Maybe the delay was partially my fault. I ordered a custom configured build to order(BTO) laptop with all the bells an whistles. There is only 2 ways to get a custom BTO PowerBook. Either order directly from the Apple Store Online or Small Dog. I choose Small Dog since I could save on sales tax, shipping and the California computer Recycling Fee.

I ordered a 15″ 1.67GHz PowerBook, with 2×512MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 8x SuperDrive, and the 128MB VRAM video card.

I was thrilled with the new laptop when I finally got it. It was fast and appeared rather durable. Wednesday I got some bad news…

I wouldn’t have even known I had a problem, if I hadn’t read it on MacFixIt.com. I caught this article in their news feed.

I checked, and I have the exact same symptoms they describe.

• My “About This Mac” pane reports 512 MB DDR SDRAM.
• When I run the Apple Hardware Test from the CD I get: Memory: Error detected at startup & ERROR CODE post/0/2048 SODIMM0/J25LOWER [sorry for the crappy camera-phone pic.]
• Apple System Profiler(ASP) reports the lower slot as empty.
• When I swap the RAM modules positions, ASP still reports no RAM in lower slot.

I called Small Dog Tech Support Thursday since they didn’t respond to my email from Wednesday.[Actually Small Dog emailed me a few hours after I called them. I have to give them credit for following up. See. The only weird thing with this email is that Small Dog is passing me off to Apple Care.] They confirmed that they were getting similar reports and that my computer was still under warranty. They advised me to try taking it to a local repair shop since it would be more convenient for me instead of shipping the laptop back and forth to Small Dog in Vermont.

It’s not life threatening. My laptop is still running. I’ll have to find some time to get to local repair shop sometime in the next few days.