Some evacuees, like Lila King, have ended up staying in their vehicles.
Ms. King, 75, has been bouncing between motels and sleeping in her truck with her 40-year-old son since they were displaced by the Eaton fire.
Ms. King recently had surgery after she broke several ribs in a fall, and the nights sleeping in her truck have left her aching. She said she has been living off tacos from a nearby gas station, and wondering when, if ever, she will be able to return to her mobile home in Altadena, the unincorporated community at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains that was devastated by the Eaton Fire.
“We’re trying to get some help to get a place,” she said. “I’m worried.”
I don’t know about you folks, but every time a judge wanted to sentence me for something, I had to, like, be in court, an’ shit.
Tell me again about the whole “rule of law” thing. And then show me the tab for treating Nazi Jesus like he was some senile old fool who just “forgot” that he tried to walk out of the store with the whole country in his pocket.
Fuck me. Arlo Guthrie got tossed in the clink and fined $50 for illegally dumping garbage in Stockbridge, Mass. Nazi Jesus took a dump on the entire United States of America and he’ll be cheating on the front nine before noon Florida time.
And come Jan. 20, he’ll take his act on the road, to the White House.
Just another day at Alice’s Restaurant for this guy. He can get anything he wants. Excepting Alice.
Our Innertubes punctured at 11 a.m. Friday, a flat that that didn’t get fixed until 8 p.m. So that was … fun.
Actually, it was hardly an annoyance at all, barring the dealing with CenturyLink “customer service,” a maze of domestic bots and overseas humans whose basic American is much better than my Hindi but still something of a guessing game, tech-support-wise.
Herself wrangled the bots with her iPhone while I dealt with the Subcontinent on mine, and as per usual she brought home the bacon. So I got to tell my guy, “James,” that yes, there was an outage in our area and it would not be resolved until 11 p.m. Ever the newsman, even in retirement. I should’ve sent him a bill.
Anyway, even when it works, we have shit Innertubes in our little corner of The Duck! City (“Gateway to Los Lunas”).
We pay top dollar for bottom-of-the-barrel DSL, same price as in Bibleburg for half the speed, and it inches ever higher from month to month because of course it does.
Our Actiontec C1000A modem-router dates to 2012, making it two years older than the MacBook Pro I’m using to write this. It is of course “retired” — the Actiontec, not my Mac — and I don’t see any point in replacing either device because El Rancho Pendejo apparently isn’t wired for the zoom-zoom all you fiber-optic types take for granted.
When the place was built in 1970 the telephone pedestal box was installed at the east end of the property, as far from the house itself as it is possible to get without actually being in the arroyo. The wiring to said box may have been upgraded over the past five decades; the wiring to the house has not.
Thus we limp along with download speeds ranging from 6 to 12 mbps, and uploads under 1 mbps.
So, when we lose our DSL, well — ain’t no thang. Because our iPhones — with maybe two bars from Verizon down here at the bottom of the cul-de-sac — turn into personal hotspots that work just as well as our DSL router-modem. When it works.
We got 0.38 inch of rain in about 0.38 minute last night. Unlike Apple’s customer service, it was excellent.
Time to die. For my mid-2014 MacBook Pro, anyway.
I should’ve signed a DNR instead of the usual shit-happens waiver when I dropped the 15-inch MBP off to have its swollen battery replaced and overworked fans checked out, or just pulled the SSD and recycled the remains. At some point between handing it over to the “Genius” and paying $267.99 for the battery replacement the display managed to get itself FUBARed and now I have a laptop that can’t be used as … well, as a laptop.
Looks brand-new, dunnit?
One sees little need for a $267.99 battery in a 10-year-old MacBook that requires an external display to be useful. Mobile this is not. My lap isn’t that big.
Straight answers regarding just what occurred were not forthcoming. There were only the shrugs, the averted eyes, the mumbling about the advanced age of the MacBook. And the “give us your money” part, which — unlike the MacSurgery — proved successful.
But that shit’s on me. I knew replacing the battery was a real job of work — which was why I handed it off to the “Genius” instead of tackling it myself — and I wanted to keep the old MacDawg hunting. Should’ve saved my pennies for the new smaller-and-better-than-ever M4 Mini said to be coming down the pike later this year.
At one memorable point in my inquest, the local “Geniuses” were not answering their phone and Apple’s phone-answering droid punted me to global customer service, where a human lateraled me back to the ABQ Apple Store, where after 10 minutes on hold the person who finally picked up thought I was customer service.
“I can help them with that, go ahead and put them on.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I can help them with that, put them on.”
“I am the customer.”
“Oh….”
I briefly considered going Full Mad Dog on these rotten Apples and their Samsung-level customer service. But what the hell? Even counting its two battery replacements that old Pro earned what I spent on it a hundred times over. Nothing lasts forever, though I have other MacBooks from 2014, 2012, and 2006, plus a G4 PowerBook from 2005, whose displays —¡que milagro! — still display. I can still use this one as a desktop until when — or if — I decide to modernize.
Tell you what, though. I’ll be shipping any future repair jobs to Apple’s main fix-’em-up plant, and buying any new product directly from Cupertino. I remain a firm believer in supporting local businesses, but our local “Geniuses” have seen the last of Your Humble Narrator.
Mad Blog Media 