Step up to the genius bar

Ever since Apple started opening its retail stores, it's been really hard to avoid poking my head in whenever I pass one in the mall - they're so unlike any other store that it's fun to wander in, look at the shiny new toys, kick the tires, etc. And in each one is an area way in the back called the "Genius Bar". I'd always wondered what it was for, as while I'd never really paid attention, I couldn't remember see anyone sitting there and doing anything. Do they serve drinks there (Apple Martinis? Sour Apples?), or what? Last week, I found out.

Viv's laptop had been acting up for a while; not enough to concern us too much, really...a screen flicker here, a not-so-efficient battery there, that sort of thing. Last month I randomly visited Apple's web site and stumbled upon the Expanded iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program there. I noticed that screen flicker was one of the symptoms, and who am I to turn down a free replacement logic board? Toss in the fact that I'd heard good stories about people who sent in their computers to fix one particular problem and got a whole host of other things replaced, and I was sold.

Then last week, bad things started happening. Suddenly the hard drive started making random clicking noises, and startup took five, ten, fifteen minutes. Programs would take minutes to launch, then freeze for no reason. I verified/repaired permissions, ran Norton Utilities, defragged, everything I could think of. It semi-sorta-quasi-fixed the speed problem, as the machine's speed increased from "customer service" to merely "inconvenient", but I did have a couple of near-heart attacks, once when the drive randomly disappeared after Disk Doctor crashed, and the other time when I rebooted into OS X and got a black screen that said this:

/etc/master.passwd: not a directory
/etc/master.passwd: not a directory
-sh: /etc profile: not a directory
-sh -2.05b#

Ew. Fortunately, I was able to figure out that Disk Doctor had simply screwed up the symlink between /etc and /private/etc (don't ask) and repaired it using this article, while also running fsck (no, not "fuck", File System ChecK) in the process to see if that helped the machine any. And thanks to my heroic efforts, lo, the computer did resuscitate. And yea, verily, I stopped fucking around with it (not fscking around with it), and backed the whole hard drive up onto my desktop.

The very next morning, it was off to the Apple Store - nimbly navigating the mall parking lot, swerving through the mallways and hallways (people need to consider the walkways of a mall to be more like a highway...if you must stop, move to the shoulder, or I WILL REAR END YOU, and with no qualms, either), etc. I walked in, went up to the counter in front, and asked the nice cashier person (who was surprisingly un-swamped) whom I should see about sending a computer back to Apple. "Oh, you just need to make an appointment at the Genius Bar."

Aha!

We strolled over to one of the new iMac G5s (VERY handsome, by the way), punch up Apple's web site, and made an appointment right then and there. There's a few other people ahead of me in line, but they've stupidly decided to go wander the mall (at Christmas! Are they INSANE?!) so when one of the Genii rattled off three names before coming to mine, I was magically next in line, and the patient was brought out to perform.

You know how when you're watching ER, and someone brings out a rib spreader, you wince and grimace anyway, even though you know it's not real? That's kind of how I felt when he pried up the keyboard to get at the serial number plastered atop the innards of the iBook. Then he whipped out a scanner, grabbed the bar code to get the serial number into his computer's form, and we were on our way. A bit of a hangup when he realized it was a refurbished machine instead of a factory original, but it still qualified for the program. 15 minutes later, it was packaged up and back on its way to the homeland, a visit to Cupertino, hopefully to return soon with a clean bill of health...