Tag: Other World Computing

Snot rag

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Kleenex and Mucinex and tea, oh my.
Kleenex and Mucinex and tea, oh my.

Gah. I was congratulating myself for having avoided the cold that felled Herself — dodged a boogery bullet, evaded a snot rocket, as it were — and then, boom!

Attack of the clones: Cloning the MacBook's hard drive to a new OWC SSD using SuperDuper and a USB Universal Drive Adapter.
Attack of the clones: Cloning the MacBook’s hard drive to a new OWC SSD using SuperDuper and a USB Universal Drive Adapter.

Got me.

Thus, while it is a springlike 64 degrees outdoors, here I sit, full of drugs, hot tea and bad ideas. Like installing a new SSD in my old black MacBook to give it a taste of the 21st century.

This is not unlike putting spinners on a Nash Metropolitan, but what the hell — at just under a C note from the fine folks at Other World Computing, a bigger, faster drive is a whole lot cheaper than a new laptop for road trips requiring a bit more screen real estate and software than the 11-inch MacBook Air provides.

Plus, being slightly crazed on caffeine, pseudoephedrine and guaifenesin, I need something to keep my hands busy. It’s either this or follow the news, and that seems futile since I no longer have any hair to pull out.

• Late update: The surgery was successful, and now I have a zippy little 120GB SSD in my 8-year-old MacBook. Probably should’ve gone bigger, but SSDs are pricey, and I have a 120GB external drive I can use to store image files.

Rise of the machines

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

We seem to have a rebellion on our hands here.

First a video camera gets snarky with me on Thursday, and then yesterday my backup hard drive commits suicide and tries to take the iMac with it.

I’m talking refusal to boot, the blue screen with spinning wheel, all the dire portents of the End Times, which the Bible tells us will be heralded by an Irish-American bearing a smoking Visa card to the Apple Store (see the MacBook of Jobs, Ch. 10.6.8).

So I forced a shutdown, unplugged all the peripherals, reminded myself of the first of the Four Noble Truths (life is qualified by suffering), and hit the power button.

Banzai!

A series of diagnostics indicated that my 2TB miniStack v3 Firewire drive was FUBAR, and today the wizards at Other World Computing agreed and told me to return that bad boy for regrooving. It’s the only product of theirs that’s ever failed me, and they’re taking care of bizniz, more power to their Torx wrenches.

I won’t be able to back up my bullshit until they send a replacement, but I expect that the world can get by with only one whiff of my stink for a few days.