Colony House - Dorset, VT

I haven't posted in forever. Again. But this time I have a good reason: Complete Computer Meltdown. Listen, I'm not a computer wiz, what I know about computers, I've learned from using them. So when my computer wouldn't start up properly and flashed a "No" sign and then a blinking question mark folder, I panicked. PANIC! Well, as much a I can panic, having never actually panicked for real in my entire life. I'm not kidding.

I googled the problem and read a bunch of stuff about my hard drive becoming "unblessed." yeah. I don't know either. I called my parents and informed them that they would need to search their entire house for the install disks that came with my computer, because of course I didn't bring them with me, why the hell would I do that? Macs don't crash! Duh. Anyway my mother was able to find them pretty painlessly in one of the first places she looked and FedExed them to me. That was a long 4-day wait. Damn weekend.

In the meantime, I used a boot disk from a MacBookPro to start up my comp and try and deal with it. The words excruciatingly slow and also futile come to mind. I was able to boot up with this disk, but not much else. I called my friend Marc, who IS a computer genius and he of course made my near-panic worse by saying it could be a physical issue with the hard drive. Like maybe something in there broke. Something I can't fix for free, even with help from the internet. The nearest Apple store is an hour and a half from here and also my warranty is up. If you think I bought AppleCare, you are out of your mind. May as well save my $300 for my next computer. Anyway I never made it there.

When my FedEx package from Mom came, several things fell out: 2 install disks, user manual, warranty info and... a Leopard install disk. What?!!?!? All this time I was running Tiger and I *could* have been running Leopard?!?! It came with my computer?!? Damn my ignorance at the moment of unpacking my computer. I probably wrote it off as some junk program I didn't need and then never thought about it again. Months later when I was fully immersed in Mac life, I considered buying Leopard. I almost paid for software. I never do that! Suddenly I realized that I considered purchasing something I already had? And now my computer was dead and I could have been enjoying it that much more this whole time?!!? GHA!

I had no choice, I had to get the thing up and running again just so I could install Leopard. It was my Apple-given right! Anyway I booted with my own install disk, backed up all my important stuff and then I started a new install. The internet told me that if I installed over what I had already, it would re-bless the hard drive and keep all of my other stuff. Meaning, I didn't have to back up, but it was a good idea. Especially if that wasn't the problem and my computer ended up exploding. At least then I would have my work files. And the second season of Pushing Daisies.

I started the install, went to bed, woke up when the first disk popped out, put the second in and went to bed again. This morning... the computer started all by itself! No boot disk needed! YAY! But when I started up Firefox it was still being an asshole. Firefox was ruining my good time! I had been having problems with it before the meltdown, that was the reason I turned my computer off in the first place and the start of all this trouble. I tried updating it and that did nothing. Finally I just reinstalled the damn browser, lost all my settings and bookmarks, but whatever. My computer works now.

I'm kind of on the fence about this though. I think that whatever started the major problem in my computer, where it couldn't find its own damn hard drive without help, maybe started with Firefox? I really don't know. All I know is, it was giving me trouble, I tried to reboot my comp and suddenly it won't work. Then when I get it working, everything is fine except for Firefox freaking out. So maybe I shouldn't use it until the next update? It's just that I love Firefox so much. It makes the internet worth browsing, that's how much I love it. Safari just won't cut it.

Well, probably all of my problems in life (laziness, homelessness, unemployment) will be solved when I update to Leopard. I hear the newer Mac operating systems will even find you a job these days. A good job. Where you get paid.