Thursday, August 5, 2010

Just Another Little Adventure

My alternate title was "Annoying." But I am working on the positive spin. When my girls were young and something didn't go the way we'd planned, I would often say, "It's just another one of life's little adventures." We still laugh about some of those, like the time both headlights went out and we got stuck in the mud outside Lubbock, Texas after a Christmas shopping trip. Everything that could go wrong, did. Just another little adventure.

My current adventure #1: Our two year old iMac is crashed and we can't seem to revive it. I got up one morning and it locked up while I was entering my password. No problem, right? Restarted it and suddenly an icon I'd never seen began flashing on the screen. Looks like a folder with a question mark in it. Nothing else showed up on the screen. So I tried rebooting, turned everything off, unplugged everything, waited, did all of this several times and nothing seemed to help. I won't bore you with the whole big story but lets just say that I've had advice from many people, none of which has helped (though we thank you for your advice) and I am dreading the whole sitting-on-the-phone-with-remote-tech-support because there's no one here who's a real Apple guru. I've been using a very old laptop at home, but it's super slow, there's no more antivirus stuff loaded up on it, and it's almost not worth the effort. Plus it would not even let me get onto Blogger. On the other hand, I am getting other things done so maybe it's good for me to have to withdraw from cyberspace a little bit.

Adventure #2: Our email provider, TelAlaska, did some upgrading last week. We had to call in advance and obtain new passwords. I called and got one for me and one for Rich. I logged on after the upgrade and realized my email account is now assigned to Richard Bye. I called to talk with tech support and the guy assured me he would change the name to Jane Bye. I asked him to check and make sure our names hadn't been switched with each other and he said both accounts had Rich's name on them. In fact, while we were on the phone, he said it was all fixed. It's not. If you receive an email from Richard Bye, it could be from Rich and it could be from me. I was told to call back again and I just haven't felt like dealing with it. I know it's small, but it's *annoying,* I mean an adventure.

Adventure #3: And this is the biggest adventure of all. While I was using our very slow laptop, I decided to check our Alaska Air Visa and pay the bill. We use that sucker for everything because we get air miles and you know how precious air miles are out here. So we run it up and then pay it off every month. Guess what? Someone has spent $418.99 at a camera and electronics store. Unalaska has no camera and electronics store and we haven't been back off the island since Hawaii. I called Rich and left him a message asking about it, thinking maybe he ordered something online for his camera, but it's odd he never mentioned it. Nope, it wasn't him. Oh, crap! I called Bank of America and the very nice customer service guy said yes, someone charged it online or by phone on July 29th but that's all the info he had. After thanking me for being SUCH a good customer (read: you use our credit card A LOT!), he advised that we needed to close the account and get a new one.

Okay, the 29th was the same day the computer went down. Coincidence?

So here I sit, waiting to have the proper name assigned to my email account, waiting to see if my computer is ever going to get fixed or if it's done, and waiting for my new credit card to arrive so I can do some shopping. My new best friend at Bank of America did say he'd expedite it since I am such a good customer.

6 comments:

Suzassippi said...

While I think it rare for a Mac to bite the big one, it does happen. I lost my iBook while at my folks--just booted up and died and that was that. Your post reminded me of something my old supervisor said: Sometimes the things that happen are like a challenge and you learn from them; sometimes, it is just crap and you just have to deal with it. LOL

Gigi said...

It may be more easily solved than we think but we have to see what else we need to do. The re-install still won't work. I've put it on hold because I just don't want to deal with it. LOL Yes, some things are just that way--crap you have to deal with. :) Happy birthday, by the way!

Betty said...

Hope you get the credit card mess straightened out. You wonder how that could possibly happem. dpm't you?

Kathi said...

Funny, my kids will tell you that we had many adventures, too. Having such a poor sense of direction, I'd often get lost, and if I said, "We're lost," the kids would get upset, so I changed it to, "We're having an adventure," and they'd get all excited about the adventure, and my stress level would go down to zero! I hope you get all the issues worked out. I think Mercury must be in retrograde because it seems everyone is having car issues and computer issues lately! I just posted on my thursdayworks.blogspot.com page- read it if you get a chance! (Singing with the boys) I think that's my title...

Alaska Steve said...

Yikes! Considering you and I have the same computer about the same age, your post scares me! Hope things are going more smooth now - cheers!

Gigi said...

Hopefully nothing will happen to yours, Steve! Pipa is going to come over and help me one night soon. Nothing's changed....darn it!