Mama Never Said There’d Be Two Contiguous Days Like This

So yesterday continued the stretch of unfortunate events. I decided to hide and work on the paper to make up for the lost time from the day before. Got a good start, and then after a couple of hours, the computer started its weird behaviour. Slow….. applications hanging up for a long time… etc. Then I realized that it was super hot, perhaps more than it ever has been before. Perhaps brought on by it being a really hot day. Then I realized that I can’t recall the last time I have heard the fan on the computer. In fact, I’m not sure I ever have. A check via IM with one of my students confirmed that it is really obvious when the fan is on with this computer. So I formulated a theory that somehow the computer is not able to cool itself down in these extreme conditions. The fan needs repairing, the system is overheating and it is producing problems. I put it to sleep and into the freezer for a little while. A few minutes later, nice and crisp and cool (like a KitKat straight out of the fridge -delicious!) I started it up again. Runs perfectly. Aha!

So I went like this for a couple of cycles… Computer overheats, I cool it down, I get another hour of work or so done. But I’ve begun to worry that I’m about to lose my hard drive. This is a particular horror for me, since I’ve not backed up this computer for a long, long time, because….. The LaCie d2 250gb external hard drive I bought for the purpose mysteriously started to remain in stealth mode, i.e., not allow itself to be recognised by any of my computers.

So I spent several hours in the afternoon trying to figure out how to resurrect the drive so that I can dump as much of my powerbook’s hard drive onto it before its next shutdown (I’m concerned that it won’t come back up). I learned a lot. That particular series of external hard drives are notoriousy unreliable, and furthermore, there was a firmware update by the manufacuter a while ago, since it had communication problems with some computers. I tried several times to install the new firmware using the imac, but….. it’s in stealth mode, so the computer can’t install it. Sigh.

By time I gave up, it was 6:00pm and most of the day had gone. No progress. Pending doom if computer’s hard drive dies. Hardly any work done on paper. No lectures written for the week. In the end, I decided to relax by taking apart the bike’s back tyre and searching for further punctures using the good old fashioned techniques from the old days: soapy water to look for bubbles, etc. I found three more micro-punctures. Wow. I think I must have gone over a pile of broken glass or something. (Fixing them all was actually rather theraputic, and once I’d established that there were no more leaks, it was nice to have at least one success for the day.)

In the end, I decided to go into my office for a night time session to get some work done to make up for the lost time. When I got home at half past midnight, the computer had died. I just get the blank grey screen. (Not as bad as the blue scrren of death, but worrying all the same….) And guess what? The computer’s two years old, and so it has had a good run so far…. the warranty has run out, but I’d cleverly thought to buy Applecare to extend it….. and now I realize I forgot to register it. Idiot me.

Oh boy.

-cvj