Dean's Light Box

Genius

Mrs. D's iMac is in the hands of a genius.

On Thursday I managed to get the iMac down to the closest Apple store which is a mere 30 minutes (ish) from work.  I was able to justify the trip on a couple of grounds;  I had to run another errand in the vicinity which was time sensitive and as my employment with my former job officially ends on this coming Tuesday and I have to send their computers back, I'll be essentially computerless.  The old machine with a Pentium III-450 MHz processor sitting in my office doesn't really count as a computer anymore.  And for practical reasons, Mrs. D uses what used to be my PC for teaching classes.

So I haul the iMac in its rather imposing, stark white box through downtown to the store and find the nearest available Apple store worker.  This fellow, quite expectedly, fits the profile you might imagine of an Apple employee--a little bit nerdy with an edgy haircut that comes off as artsy and a black t-shirt a-la Steve Jobs.  He asks how he might help and I explain that my iMac is rather ill and the phone support people told me to pay a visit to their store.  "Ah," he asks, "Do you have an appointment at the Genius Bar?"  "The Genius Bar?!" I ask, trying to mask any of the incredulity that may have slipped out.

He grabs the nearest mouse to awake one of their display Macs, quickly pulls up a program of some sort and asks me to fill in my information while he goes off to see if the "Genius Bar" can fit me in.  I explain that I live a full hour's drive away and ask whether I might just leave the iMac with them and have the first available genius ring me on my mobile phone where I can explain the symptoms.  He smiles and says, "The Genius Bar is fully booked today but let me see what we can do to fit you in since you came so far."  I obediently fill in my contact information wondering whether purchasing a Mac was really such a good idea in the first place and feeling a little embarrassed that I may have come off as stunned when he mentioned the "Bar."

So I stand over by the iPods for the next five minutes trying to look natural while I wait for my Apple representative to work his magic.  I watch the Apple store clientele.  I see angry looking teen age boys with haircuts and clothes that I think were meant to say, "I don't care," but it is evident that they care enough to choose just the right clothes to make their statement.  There is a guy that looks like a salesman of some sort, complete with a salon tan, asking an Apple guy which firewire external drive he should buy.  Then there is a 40 something looking guy asking how to put music on his iPod.  There are a few people dressed up with the "I'm an artist" look--bold framed glasses, loud shoes, and very tight shirts.  And, there was me--a somewhat nerdy 30 something with a pensive look on his face.

The pensive look came from my thinking that I had better behave myself a little better if I expected this Apple worker to squeeze me in at the Bar.  He comes back a few minutes later and says, "Let's get you set up, Chris will help you out today..."  I follow him over to the far end of the bar and a 20 something fellow with a friendly disposition and a black shirt that says in small lettering, "Genius," says, "Hey Curtis, I'll help you out today..."

So we set up the ill Mac and I explain that it usually takes about 15 minutes and then the Mac will start to show all sorts of stray horizontal lines in application windows and eventually freeze--at least 75% of the time.  Chris says, "Cool.  Let me put a little load on your CPU and you can hang out, browse the web, check your mail, or whatever, until the issue occurs.  When it does, just call me over and we'll check it out."  I go to work opening every application I can think of hoping beyond hope that the Mac will cooperate and clearly display it's illness.

A couple of minutes into my application launching frenzy an evidently frequent visitor of the Genius Bar drops by and notes that her iBook has been freezing up lately.  I focus my eyes harder than ever on my screen to make sure I don't make any silly comments given the kindness of the Genius and his fitting me in without an appointment.  But Chris, the Genius, employs his friendly disposition to put her and I at ease.  He jokes a little, "Yes, but its freezing out there, literally!"

By this time I'm feeling a lot more at ease and hopeful that the Mac will reveal it's issue.  I figure if I open 20 browser tabs within Firefox and fill them with really noisy pages with tons of graphics and perhaps even a few videos, we should be on our way in no time at all.

So the woman and I joke with each other about which Mac will freeze first and I am pleased to note that our little iMac won.  We got the full random line symptom and then when Chris took a closer look, it froze.  Nothing could have made me happier.

"Well, I think we'll start by fitting you with a new logic board," he explains.  "In these iMacs, is that just the video controller or is it pretty much everything including the CPU?" I ask.  "Yeah, everything, this really ought to take care of the issue."  He checks their stock and notes that they should be able to get the new board fitted into the computer and have it ready for me by mid next week.

Wow.  I guess this Genius Bar is pretty cool after all.  Most other service places keep their technicians as far away from customers as possible.  The Apple store puts them right there with you.  And they put you right there next to other customers with issues.  That's pretty bold if you think about it.  Interesting.  Genius, actually.

 

Winter and Work and Mac

Winter is clearly in full swing here in the mountains.  Little EV has put her new purple, high performance, steerable sled through fairly extensive tests down the slope in the back.  We determined that Daddy may be a little too heavy for this ride except when the snow exceeds at least 8 to 10 inches of accumulation.  Little EV noted that we should put "rock clearing" of the sled run on our to-do list for this spring so that Daddy can ride without scraping the bottom of the sled when we encounter rocks.

Fortunately we spread the wildflower seeds in the front a couple of months ago and we are hoping for a nice, fairly low maintenance first round of landscaping.  With a few exceptions, our native grass is covered with snow.

I received a few requests to hear a bit more about the new job. My new job is great.

The new job feels a bit like an assignment to understand the principles of an internal combustion engine and be able to answer all questions about it, how it can break, and define how we will make it better in the coming years--a gratifying yet overwhelming task.  But, that's only because I just started and have a lot to learn.  I am the reporting systems business analyst.  That means that when anyone, customers or fellow employees, have a question about reports or accessing data, I'm up to bat.  So far I have navigated through a couple of gratifying experiences where customers had detailed questions about how to get specific types of information, I researched the issue, and then provided working solutions.

My responsibilities also extend into the realm of product management.  This means that by collaborating with others, I define the philosophy and future direction of the product as far as reporting is concerned.  So, for example, the product managers of the core reservation system have outlined some of the requirements for future releases.  One of the most substantive requirements is that the system will be capable of allowing customers to code-share.  This is the practice of airlines selling multi-leg tickets, say from City A to City C, where the carrier from which you bought the ticket gets you from City A to City B, and then they reserve a seat for you on a different carrier to get you from City B to City C.  So given that requirement, I get to define how the reporting aspects of the system will evolve to handle those requirements.  It seems simple enough but will undoubtedly keep me occupied for a long time to come.  I enjoy these types of mental puzzles, particularly when information systems are involved.  Yes, I'm pretty comfortable with my nerdiness.

Happily, the drive is quicker than I expected--roughly 40 minutes each direction when the road conditions allow.  Admittedly, the drive has been a little rough, though not unbearable, because the conditions have been icy.  On Wednesday last week a fellow traveler that passed me in his VW Jetta suddenly lost all traction, spun until almost sideways, nearly hit the center concrete barrier and then slid to the emergency lane on the opposite side of the Interstate.  Then, the next day I passed an overturned SUV and several other vehicles involved in a collision in the same area.  Fortunately, emergency services had already responded and it looked like there were no fatalities.  I think the main issue is that some drivers attempt to navigate our mountain Interstate a little, or in some cases a lot, too quicly.  My front wheel drive car equipped with snow tires seems to do pretty well as long as I drive at reasonable speeds.  Coming over the pass one day last week, reasonable was about 25 miles per hour.  But again, this is limited to this season of the year.

Now regarding the Mac...where to start?  I like our iMac a lot.  It is elegant in terms of design and function and the operating system is pretty solid.  But the hardware--not so much.  We're having issues with random horizontal lines showing up in application windows, and in a few cases, complete system freezes.  So, to determine whether this is a software or hardware issue, I reinstalled the OS.  We still get the random horizontal lines, though I have not, as yet, experienced any freezing.  While that's a little bit of an ambiguous answer, my working hypothesis is hardware.  It's one of those funky issues that are hard to nail down and is probably hardware related but the Apple people may hesitate to jump in and replace the motherboard without a whole lot of testing.

I must say that the $169 Apple Care plan was a good investment.  Maybe I'll show up at the store and the friendly Apple worker will smile and say, "No problem Dean, we'll just swap out your iMac and have a new one on your doorstep by Thursday.  Will that work ok?"  Visualization is powerful.  ;-)  Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

New Years Rager

The family, while not complete due to various obligations, had a raging new years eve party.

It all started off with some of the best rock and roll you've ever heard.  Well at least the best you've ever heard live...in my parents' living room.  And not because CJ3 didn't rock better than ever.  I brought along the drum kit minus the toms.  Toms, after all, are mostly just for looks and Neal Peart style drum solos.  I had fun and everyone very graciously refrained from asking me to stop.

Next came Mr. P's demonstration of how "Coke and Mentos" works for those that missed the YouTube original.  So if you still haven't seen it, here's a sequence that tells the whole story.  Mrs. D notes that this is THE MOST useful way one could possibly use Coke and/or Mentos.

First we have the Coke.  According to our in-house expert, any soda will do.  A 2-liter or larger bottle is recommended to ensure you get the full effect.  Check.

In go the Mentos.  Check.

Oooooh!  Aaaah!  That's rad...

Then things became very tasty with a fabulous, mostly Chinese dinner featuring some very nice shrimp spring rolls, a lovely spicy peanut sauce, meat dumplings, all the Chinese trimmings, and...uh...yam fries for those that weren't already completely stuffed.  Oh, and Lucy made her famous piglets in blankets as appetizers for consumption during construction of the spring rolls and dumplings.

After the little ones got to bed we pulled out the games and settled on Quiddler (sp?)  It's a word game--not usually my strong suit but I finished in a respectable third place with a little (ok, a lot) of help.  HeyLucy became particularly flustered when she found her siblings cooperating but she soon chipped in.  Not to be completely outdone, however, she pulled into second place on the last round.  Nicely done Lucy!  Oh, and we are all under written contract to confess that CJ3 is, without reservation, the KING of Quiddler.  Or is is Quidler?  Quigler?

Just prior to the final round we took a breather to celebrate the arrival of the new year.  Mr. P, who is much more of a party animal than I had ever imagined, made special arrangements for the occasion.  Silly String--and not just one can each.  We're talking about an average of 2.5 cans each.  We pulled out all the stops and the photos tell the story.  Yes, that is silly string captured mid-air just before making contact with CJ3's noggin.

All in all, it was a fine way to start the new year.