So much for karma

She who must be obeyed is a firm believer in karma. Do bad stuff and bad stuff will happen to you, and vice versa. As this means she is inclined to do good stuff, this is a sensible philosophy and is to be encouraged. To a certain extent I am inclined to this way of thinking myself; and it does make for a more pleasant life.

So when I went to help Antony with his computer yesterday afternoon, I was pretty sure my computing karma would be in good shape afterwards. Like me, Antony is a Mac user. Like me, Antony wanted a way of downloading torrents on a separate machine that could be left grinding away in a small room, and the answer was a cheapo XP machine with a wireless connection.

As his requirements reflect my set-up, Antony was under the mistaken impression that I could somehow help him with his configuration. My standard help comprised of saying “well, it works on my set-up, but I can’t remember how I did it”, and then frantically googling in search of an answer. Still, after a couple of hours we had most things working and I went home flushed with the warm feeling of having helped my fellow man.

Walked into my computer room and there was a funny ticking noise coming from my iMac, the sort of ticking noise you get when your hard drive is buggered. And it was. The machine refused to restart, just sat there making ticking and grinding noises. So much for my computing karma.

The iMac is a fantastic machine (when it is working). A triumph of design with all the components jammed into a thin form factor behind a lovely 24" monitor.

But getting at the hard drive to replace it is not as simple as opening a cover and undoing a couple of screws. If changing a hard drive in a standard Windoze PC is akin to clipping your toes, then changing a hard drive in an iMac is akin to performing open heart surgery, a task recommended as only being trusted to Apple trained technicians.

So I got out the packing box and resigned myself to a trip to Bangkok, a hefty bill, and being Mac-less for several days.

But then I went out on a night-time SUP cruise with Craig and Tony for a couple of hours. By the time I had returned home I had decided that I would do the job myself. I sharpened my screwdrivers.

To be continued…..

Comments 🔗

2008-10-12 | Savoy Brown says

I’m a techno-geek by profession and one of my favorite sayings that I use with clients is, “Technology is a wonderful thing, when it works”…

That grinding / clicking noise from a dead hard drive is truly sickening… Especially when you know you haven’t done a backup in the last 2 years…

BTW, sometimes karma has a wry sense of humor…

2008-10-13 | Spike says

In my case it was 2 weeks, but I lost some nice photos. Any ideas on how I might recover the data. Tried Spinrite to no avail.