Some Days in the Life - May 15, 1999

Comments





Obscure Definitions

ARAP: Apple Remote
Access Protocal. A
method of using
Appletalk through a
modem. Not a very
good method, either.

Norton: Norton
Utilities and Norton
Disk Doctor. One of
the standards of Disk
repair and recovery.

Coffee: A drink.

Let be back up to... the beginning.

I was almost finished with work, and was pondering leaving early. This would have been, oh, threeish. When the phone rang. This is generally a bad sign on a Friday Afternoon within an hour of work ending, but you can never tell.

It was my Apple rep. And she didn't sound happy. In fact, she sounded far closer to tears than any Sales Representative I'd ever heard. Which, given the time of year, I chalked up to allergies. I wasn't too surprised to hear from her, because we'd been having some trouble with Apple -- specifically, their Applecare program, which is a kind of extended warranty you can purchase. They'd started denying Applecare to machines that were out of Warranty or otherwise "obsolete," which makes Applecare kind of worthless if you think about it. But I digress. We were bouncing things back and forth with Apple on this because we own several hundred of their computers, of many ages. We just placed this year's order in fact --two hundred and thirty powerbooks, twenty-three iMacs, about ten tower models, five servers....

I love my job. We get toys.

Anyway, I figured my rep was calling me to try to make things nice over the Applecare issue.

I was wrong. It was about the Powerbook buy. And my rep didn't have allergies.

You see, we ordered at the end of April, and we were ordering a model we knew was going to be discontinued. It was one we could afford, and they had plenty in stock at the time. After all, they hadn't announced the new machines yet.

But they didn't process the order until May 13th, after the new Powerbooks were announced and Apple had its "Wall Street" model blow out. So, they process our order... and there weren't any Powerbooks to give Brewster Academy. That model was gone. The next model up could cover the order... but was nine hundred dollars a unit more expensive.

My rep apparently freaked. Begged. Cajoled. And was up sick half the night. And then called me to inform me that she's gotten a great deal on these machines, at just two hundred dollars more per computer.

Or, over $40,000 more than we'd budgeted.

She spoke to me and Elaine, the Assistant Business Manager. Neither one of us would be happy. At all. Sad is, I think, how we'd be. And upset. And mad. Our position was simple. "This is what you gave us for a price. This is what we'll pay. Bait-and-switch is, after all, illegal. And we ordered when you had the machines available, you claimed."

This didn't improve my rep's mood. Her superior conveniently had just flown to California for the week, so she was generally left out on a limb.

I don't blame my rep in this. Not one bit. She was clearly at best unhappy. But this is the kind of thing that makes a dedicated Apple shop with four million in capital investment with Apple think about Dell. And my rep knew it.

We were down to $90 more per machine than expected by five-thirty on Friday, and my rep was working hard on it. It'll work out. But it set a tone for the evening. I should have expected it.

But instead, I hit the road.

I love to drive. Truly love it. And this was a gorgeous evening. Sheerly, utterly gorgeous. Sunny until long after seven. So I pointed the car to Maine and drove drove drove, hitting Fryeburg. Then, for no good reason, I turned around and went the other way, to Portsmouth. This took a couple of hours. They were nice hours. I listened to All Things Considered and Marketplace and The Humble Farmer which is a Maine Public Radio jazz show hosted by... er... this guy. You need to hear it to understand. Around then, as the sun was setting, I realized I was hungry. So I went to a place called Bickford's (I think.)

It looked like a Denny's type place, but I was wrong. Sadly, it wasn't as good as Denny's, and that takes something. I'm a great lover of Denny's, but it has to be done right. Still, it was adequate. I settled down, had some food and coffee and read a good amount on a Biography of William Marshall I picked up. I love Medieval biographies -- they help fill in the gaps of a novel I'm writing.

It was a lot of coffee.

On top of coffee I'd picked up during the trip itself.

I was past "wired" and into "vibrating" by the end of dinner.

While there, I saw a man, in his seventies, sit and have some ice cream. No big deal, except that he was wearing overalls that were blue and white, with matching cap. You know, just like a traditional Train Engineer. If any of you read Mr. Pufferbill as children, you know the type of overalls and cap I mean. Think Trains and you're about right. The overalls were perfectly clean. He looked like a children's performer, except I don't think he was. He just clearly liked trains.

I overheard him talking about model trains with the waitress, and about how he'd like to find a Caboose (full sized) that he could recondition into a little hideaway. Just a place to get away from it all. Man, what a good idea. It would be like a clubhouse, set up just the way you like -- and with style.

When I'm in my seventies, I hope I'm looking for a new clubhouse.

In the bathroom, after the meal (of course I had to go to the bathroom -- I'd had all that coffee, remember?) I was behind him waiting for the only sink. He washed his hands carefully and precisely, testing the water and changing the balance. It was almost a ritual. When he finished he smiled to me and said "you watch out for that water now, it's wicked hot."

He was right -- it was too hot. I felt pretty good after meeting the Engineer. I nodded to him back out in the restaurant and wished him a good night, and headed back on my way. More jazz music. I sang along, probably badly, and had a lot of fun.

On the way back, I drove through a traffic circle. It's not a true traffic circle, but instead one where the people in the circle have to yield to oncoming traffic from outside. I was doing maybe sixty, but slowed to around fifty before entering the circle -- it's straight through the circle (oddly) between the route I was taking and the route up to Wolfeboro, and I had the right of way in it, so no worries.

Or so I thought, before the Massive Police Vehicle hit its flashers right on my bumper. Literally on my bumper -- I'm surprised I wasn't hit. Looked like some kind of Sport Utility Cop Vehicle, so those flashers (in the SUV's grill) were right in my back window. It looked like aliens were abducting me.

I pulled over. I don't argue with police, especially when their vehicles outmass mine three to one.

It turns out that while all the roads going into the circle are 55, the circle itself is 30, even on the part of it that's straight. So, I was doing at least twenty miles an hour over. I was also nervous, since (as I think I'd pointed out) I'd had way too much coffee.

The officer was basically nice. At least twice he asked me if I were having a medical emergency. He also ask if I'd been drinking. I said no, as "too much coffee" didn't count. I offered to take a breath test. He declined. And gave me a warning about the traffic circle. So I got away with it, which was nice since I didn't think I was doing anything wrong originally.

Which just goes to show you, admit everything and don't cause trouble, and cops leave you alone. I believe that makes me craven. But, it makes me craven without a speeding ticket.

Why did he ask about medical emergencies twice? Was I that nervous from the coffee? Do I need to lose that much weight?

Anyway, I drove on home after that. Now, it was getting late. I figured my adventures for the night were done.

I figured wrong.

Home again. My folks called, so I called them back and spoke quickly to them. I don't mean it was a particularly fast phone call -- I mean I spoke quickly to them. Man that was a lot of coffee. We made plans for Sunday. And then I headed over to boot up Egoiste and check things out.

About when I hit the power button, the phone rang. At 11:10 at night on Friday. It was the Dean of Students -- the Main Office server had crashed and he needed a restart.

Who on Earth works Friday night at 11:10?

Well, no big. I schlepped over to the office and rebooted the system, getting it working just fine. I double checked everything, and headed back for home, jumping online and putting the TV on the Crap Saturday Showcase on Cartoon Network.

And Egoiste crashed. Hard.

So, I rebooted, and let it do its Disk First Aid self-test.

It failed. Unhappily.

Undaunted, I booted up the Powerbook and connected to work to get my mail and check in with folks. In the meantime, I booted Egoiste off the Norton CD and began reading it.

And Norton died. I began to be concerned. This is when I discovered a file that was maybe 200k on my desktop. Except my system thought it was two gigs long. The Volume Bitmap and the Catalog file were hopelessly corrupt.

Sigh.

So, I rebooted, and managed to get a backup program working. It started to back up to Jaz disk.

And Disk two of the backup died. Horribly. It made noises I never want to hear my Jaz drive make again. I was convinced the Jaz's heads had committed honorable Seppaku.

Restarting the backup (after rebooting, barely), I got it to back up all my stuff on three other Jaz disks. The dead one I set aside, to be disassembled later. I always wanted to disassemble a Jaz disk.

In the meantime, Work had kicked me off four times. The fourth is when I gave up and went to bed. Remember kids, ARAP sounds like a good idea but instead is a vicious killer. I slept well, despite all that coffee, and woke up around noon. Which itself felt nice.

It's now close to six, and Egoiste and I are still arguing. But that's a story for tomorrow. Oh, and I got outside for a bit. What a gorgeous day today. Summer, pretty much.