i’d rather be in haena   

One of literature’s last class acts reminisces about his friend.

“To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.”

Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business…Gradually

So a moderately important computer at work– used by someone who needs to back up their computer more often– dies. Won’t boot. Power supply is dead.

We need it fixed quickly. I know standing in line at the Apple Store Genius Bar will mean probably a week’s turnaround while they send the thing in to be fixed.

I’d used Total Mac on Geary in SF a few years back for some data recovery and hard drive work. I call them.

“I have a white 20″ iSight iMac G5 with a dead power supply. Do you have them in stock, if so, how fast can you turn it around and how much would it be?”

Guy sounds distracted. “What model is it?”

I repeat the description. It’s a standard model, and Apple’s knowledge base calls it a “white 20″ iSight iMac G5″.

[pause on other end of line]

“Okay, let me me call in and see if I can get the part. What’s your number?”

I give him my contact info.

By 12:30 the next day: no return phone call. I call him back and give him the info again. (“I got a lot of stacks of paper here, can you remind me what you need?”) It’s obviously the same guy because he sounds like he’s had too much coffee, too little sleep, and maybe a little something to calm himself down.

“OK, yeah, I remember. Do you have a model number, or serial number, or anything?” I tell him it’s a standard model and repeat the description again. By now I realize I’ve lost a day because the guy didn’t insist on this info yesterday. And he never would have called me back.

I hang up and begin to psych up for the drive to the Walnut Creek Apple Store.

UPDATE (4:45pm PST)

I found a place on Market at Powell called Keane (formerly PowerBook Guy). The reviews (yes, I still despise Yelp) are good. I talked to a pleasant, responsive and efficient person on the phone. I lugged the iMac down there on BART and the same woman I spoke with on the phone checked me in, escalated the status of the job to “rush” (for an extra $50) and it looks like I may have the machine back by Monday.

Total Mac guy (inexplicably – I’d pretty much hung up on him) called back while I was at Keane and quoted me $275 parts and labor for the job. I ignored him.

Today I plugged my iPad 2 into freshly-downloaded iTunes 10.5 in order to upgrade the iPad to iOS 5.

After about an hour, with the progress bar around 10%, the upgrade/restore failed during the verification process due to “internal error”.

I rebooted the tethered computer and the iPad, and tried again.

The upgrade/restore failed again. Another hour gone.

Luckily — even though I got a “restore failed” message, the iPad seems to still be working via the older iOS.

From what I can tell, there’s a few unhappy users out there. One of the theories is that Apple’s servers are too busy to confirm the update properly, meaning they just return the failure message after choking during verification.

Whatever the cause, it’s apparent this update (considering how important/hyped it is) isn’t working for a lot of people.

UPDATE 3:34pm PT:

Third try crashed the iPad hard during restore, involving another reboot and a separate re-restore. Took nearly two hours to run the restore.

After it was done I finally had iOS 5 on my iPad. Total time for the process to successfully complete: about 5 hours.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/speakeasy

I don’t post much anymore, but– well, for some reason…today I just feel compelled.

Speakeasy’s email blacklist problems have gotten so bad that att.com, sbcglobal.com, comcast.net and Yahoo have all banned most email coming from mail.speakeasy.net.

This means about 4 out of 5 emails sent get bounced as suspected spam.

Add to that Speakeasy’s laughably bad customer service; their motto should be “we’re never so bad that we can’t get worse.”

I used to be able to add domain email addresses with about 4 clicks on their webmin page.

Now I have to call someone, who opens a ticket, and get four confirmations that someone read the ticket, and then wait between two and four days to have the actual email address be created.

I can’t figure out if these people are sadists or just incompetent.

UPDATE: the email address was never added, and Speakeasy didn’t reply to ticket refreshes asking for progress. I switched all our email over to Rackspace the next day.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/24/color/

I don’t necessarily believe this app sucks any more or less due to its 41 million dollars in VC funding. It may suck more because of the privacy implications– verified by looking at comments on the iTunes App Store and here.

There’s a few reasons I’m not going to download the app; my opinions are only based on reading descriptions of Color on tech blogs, as well as user comments. So my views aren’t based on direct user experience, but hey, if you want to give up the contents of your phone address book to a social photo app, don’t let me stop you.

The most potent reason this app could be annoying is that now, instead of relaxing and having a good time while in public places, users will have to concentrate on alternating between photographing their potential good time with a cellphone, then staring at their cellphones to research whether other nearby dorks are also photographing and sharing their potential good time.

There are already too many cellphone-fixated zombies in the Bay area, and any app that causes an increase in population in these tunnel-vision drones is a bad thing.

Severed From the World, Villagers Survive on Tight Bonds and To-Do Lists

I have the feeling that a similar disaster this side of the Pacific might cause some of our fellow USA-native types to resort to something resembling Lord of the Flies — in Japan, it brings out the best in people. Inspirational.

http://mashable.com/2010/12/29/ipad-magazine-sales-decline/

Can’t imagine what they were thinking.

I got a Kindle 3G for Christmas (thanks Kate!) and really the only downer has been the bad selection of magazines and their pricing (and the fact that Amazon actually tries to sell “subscriptions” to blogs).

Streaming radio from my laptop.

He gave us some of the most beautiful pedal steel guitar ever to bless an album or stage. On Tonight’s the Night he infused an otherwise gritty and ramshackle work with a unique dignity and grace. Bye, Ben. And thanks.

Ben Keith, Neil Young’s steel guitarist: 1937-2010

Neil Young “Too Far Gone” with Pancho and Ben Keith (1989)