Pat! Why no recent update!? AKA Weekend In Review #2

Well friends, I'm sure that's the question on everyone's mind! Now, there are several reasons for this. God, this is a whole story, but I suppose good for everyone else but me. Oh well, usually I get on a roll whilst typing this kind of thing. This could potentially be one of those "rant" posts, but for some reason the female readers seem to enjoy rants; not to anyone's surprise. Well, I suppose I shall get onto how my weekend went. Overall, I'd say it was Awesome and Terrible. You'll understand why.

Let's start with Friday:

On Friday night I downloaded the iPhone SDK. Now, for those of you who aren't exactly tech-savvy, an SDK stands for Software Development Kit. In other words, I could develop software for the iPhone (or iPod Touch). And I'm thinking "cool! I can make apps for my own iPod so I might someday be able to de-jailbreak/de-hack my iPod Touch. Well, turns out not to be the case. For more than one reason (I'm getting to that, be patient). Apple uses their own programming language called "Cocoa" and for the iPhone/iPod Touch it is known as "Cocoa Touch." That tidbit was not vital to the story, but I thought the name was cool :). These new applications cannot violate any copyrights obviously, so basically the NES emulator is a no-no. Other such things are also not allowed. Also, if I wanted to install the native iPhone apps to my iPod I would have to pay 20 dollars. Why in the world would I pay if I could get it for free? Come on Apple, quit being greedy bastards and give it for free. Anyways, I digress. So I downloaded that Friday Night and hung out, trying to get away from the freezing cold.

Saturday: The Bad Day

I entitle this "The Bad Day" but in reality it was a "This is Frikkin ridiculous" day. I don't want to bitch, but it has to do with Apple and the below-poor, subpar technical support they gave me. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Apple products and especially enjoy Mac OS X Leopard. Its wonderful, its clean and doesn't mess up. Usually. But for some reason, my computer decided to act slow when I was in the process of opening a PDF, shortly after using Apple's Xcode program. So I sigh *sigh* and restart the computer as one would (logically) do. As it turns on I hear the familiar Apple "gongggg" sound and am relieved..... except, no Apple logo. Dang. Okay, let's restart again..... Meanwhile, I was in the shower, but upon my return I got the most dreaded icon I have ever come to experience: a folder with a question mark. I was trying to just find a pic of it, but to no avail. So I see this and I hate it because the last 2 times this happened I had to reformat my entire drive and before THAT I had to get a new Hard Drive put in by Apple. Bad experience. So I call Apple and get nowhere, call back, get a different guy, tells me there's nothing we can try except using a firewire to transfer my data from my mac to my friend's mac via firewire cable. We do this (thanks for the cable pfeif) and it still doesn't work as it should. Great. So I call Apple AGAIN and I get this guy named Rob Bunyan. He had a low voice and was LESS than helpful. We actually got into a heated argument about how Apple failed to live up to their claim that it "just works." Basically ROB BUNYAN told me I should have bought MORE Apple products to back my stuff up. He pretty much described "affordable" as anywhere from 100-1,000 dollars. A bit ridiculous. So I hung up and ate, then called back; finally a nice guy named Derek helped me out and at least got me a new Hard Drive. I got it today, but I am going to try some stuff to attempt to get my files off my old HD. I don't really understand; why did I get 2 faulty hard drives? I swear it has to be something else like a logic board failure or the motherboard. Everytime I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Derek told me the next time a replacement computer would probably be an option; thank God. Nobody has had failure like this that I know of, except on Apple Support Forums (there's a massive thread on it, so it IS an issue, though Apple has never addressed it; typical).

Oh, and I had to redo an 8 page paper I failed to back up. Actually it ended up being close to 12, so thanks Apple. I know I know I should have backed it up, usually I do via emailing it to myself, but I hadn't yet. Oh well, its better the second time 'round.

Total time on phone with Apple Support: 7 hours.

Sunday/Monday: Extended weekend

Now, Sunday was a better day than Saturday. Though my MacBook was and still is out of commission, I had a productive day of rewriting my paper. Also, later in the night, my friends Scott Emily and Erin(n) came down to stay over at Allegheny! This was most pleasing as I had not seen them in a long time (especially Scott). After their little mishap involving a vehicle and snow, they eventually made it to my dorm building thanks to a kindly "tow-guy." So we got all settled in with sleeping bags and such, and immediately the girls were going for the SNES, meanwhile Me and Scott talked tech. When Emily and Erin(n) were done, we also talked tech. We tried recovering my data, but to no avail it failed. Oh by the way, the girls did not participate in the tech talk whatsoever, just to clear that up. We also drank tea, which as usual was quite tastey; this was all whilst listening to music and stories. They left the next day, but we made tentative plans to hang out over my break! I'm excited for that haha. But it was a good time had by all. I missed classes for the first time ever on Monday (except for Astronomy) as I had to finish my Buddhism paper; I got a one day extension on it so thank God for that; actually thank Professor Olson, he is a kind and forgiving Bodhisattva. Oh well, alls well that ends well EXCEPT ALL MY STUFF ON MY COMPUTER IS GONE. God.

I hope everyone had a good weekend!

-Pat