Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
You know the feeling. You’re working along, like there’s, you know, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and like man has perfected all his machines. Then the monitor suddenly goes black for fifteen or twenty seconds. Followed by a tantalizing flash of what you were working on for two, maybe three seconds, then back to black again. Only this time for long enough to make that ache come in your chest, the ache that means all your files are belong to them.
So, as a proud Merkin gun owner, you are left with only one choice: shoot that sumbitch.
Or, if you’re not a gun owner, you call Apple support, and they walk you through a couple processes that inevitably lead to an appointment with some local “geniuses.”
That was twelve days ago, after three different and expensive parts were replaced, and yet the geniuses remain surprisingly ungenius-like. And you know what that means. They can’t fix that sumbitch. And you know what that means.
Sabbatical! Vacation! Goodbye Blog!
Yes, so we’ll be gone awhile; you can record your tears and consternation below until we get back.
Or, you can get away from your infernal computer machine and go strutting and fretting, and get some fresh air. That’s where I’m going.
UPDATE:
Okay, that was an adventure in moving. All our junk stuffed into a 24 foot moving van; well, except for a half dozen big plants, which deserved special handling. And I’m not even gonna tell you the story about the box springs that took four scheduled attempts and half a dozen phone calls to the City of Carlsbad to get them hauled away.
So the old iMac apparently crapped the bed. A year and a half “old,” that is. (Sent back to the glue factory for a dose of refurbishment.) But a new one took its place, thanks to the AppleCare$. I’m cautiously optimistic this one may last longer.
And oh yeah; It occurs to me that artists have a lot of physical baggage; especially if they don’t sell all their paintings. But, for most of them, it’s like selling one of you kids. So I keep them.
Was the move worth it? I’m not sure. No question about the new location, but I shoulda let somebody else do more of the lifting. I’ll see what the doc says on Friday; the initial diagnosis is hernia. I’ll tell you what— whatever it is, after about thirty minutes of harmless puttering around, it will make me lay down.
Is that so wrong?
