The Day the Macintosh Died
My iMac’s hard drive bit the dust last Friday night. One minute, Raphe was printing a mailing label, the next, the computer was hopelessly frozen. We had to unplug the thing to get it to shut down, and when we turned it back on, the blinking file-folder-with-a-question-mark-on-it-of-death popped up. All attempts at repairing the computer were thwarted by iMac’s refusal to acknowledge it even had a hard drive.
Last night, a Genius Bar staffer at our local Apple store confirmed the hard drive’s demise. Of course nothing was backed up (because we are nothing if not reckless about our precious memories around here), so I’ve lost the originals of every photo I’ve taken since I got the computer. I do have most of the good photos uploaded on to Photoshop.com and flickr, so by and large the real effect of the loss is a much-needed pruning of the collection. The only notable exception is our photos from the Paris vacation two years ago, the lion’s share of which are gone. That’s sad, but manageable.
The good news in all of this is that I still have a couple months of Apple Care coverage left, so what would be a nearly $400 repair costs me nothing.
The other bit of bad news is that I have no way to get photos from my cameras to the computer until I get the iMac back this weekend. So I’m posting the last two photos I have so that dedicated Barnabas Monkeypants readers might get their fix of Henry for the week.
In other news, Henry has begun using some of the signs I tried to teach him six months ago! I thought he wasn’t interested and gave up trying after three months, and then two days ago he whips out the sign for “more”! Very exciting. You will have to pester Raphe to post about that.
