Red Rose

This will have to do for a few days.

"What boots up must come down." ~ Author Unknown

Well, it happened. I thought it was going to happen yesterday when I got up, went in to my Mac and tried to wake it up. It had a stroke during the night and wouldn't wake up. So I performed CPR and did a little shock therapy and it wouldn't turn on. It sat there and spun with a faint mechanical noise every ten to fifteen seconds. I dug out the handy dandy manual and paged on back to "troubleshooting... if your Mac won't start up". Check the cords. Cords intact. Turn off power, remove cord, wait 30 seconds, reset and try again... nothing. OK.. next. Press the power button and quickly hold down the command key, option key, P key, and R key. OK. (Try doing that fast with two hands). Nothing. OK... take off all connections to printers, internet etc. and try pressing the power button while holding down the "D" Key until you hear the start up boom. OK... first time nothing. The second time... a loud horn like sound (not the melodious low chime normally heard) and a flickering of blue and there it is. Sigh of relief. I went ahead and restarted it and it did fine, so I ran the hardware scan and it found no problem. It worked all day and into the evening just fine. So, I let it go to sleep as usual last night.

This morning.... it wouldn't wake up. This time NOTHING worked. Not even the mysterious "D" key. Looking back on it I think the startup yesterday had nothing to do with the "D" key but was rather simple luck. That motorized whine that cycled every ten seconds or so yesterday was gone... only one was heard when the power button was first pushed. So I called Apple Care and fortunately the Mac is still on the plan and I will take it in to a local place tomorrow for it to be fixed. This is the same place I had to take my Dad's old Mac many years ago when, as a brand new machine it wouldn't start up. That was user error. While I was out for only one hour, he managed to throw the system folder away and it simply won't run without a system folder. They fixed it and we locked the system folder so he could never do that again. Anyway, it may take several days to fix MY Mac and I will not likely be on here.

I had withdrawal pain today. I couldn't work on my garden journal... on the Mac. I couldn't work on my pictures... on the Mac. I couldn't do e-mail... without waiting thirty minutes for this very, very slow PC to open Outlook Express. This old PC needs more RAM and other things. I am used to using both PC and Mac and can go between them rather easily, but this is excruciatingly slow. I hope that this post will cure my withdrawal until I get back on... that somehow the pain that is trying to get this Dell to work faster than a snail will force me to simply not think about the computer for a day or two. Not likely. But there is good news... I quit hyperventilating about a half an hour ago.

Let's not say good-bye, just "see you later."

(end of post)

PS: Wow! I never knew how much better the template looks on a MAC. On a PC, at least on this old Dell, you can't see the very large decorative "Quote marks" that are there right in front of my quote on the MAC. Hmm. Oh, Well!