BURIED → | Now | ← YET AGAIN
ROUND ONE
2 April 2016, 12:42
So welcome to ROUND ONE of the ongoing saga “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY MAC, NOW???!!!”
Yeah, I’m pretty much a glutton for punishment. I think the 2011 iMacs aren’t for me. Every one I get seems to be cursed.
Got this new mac off of ebay, a 2011, with no hard drive they said booted up and worked when it did have a hard drive, for $300. I figured it would be worth the risk, as I could either A) end up with a sweet mac, or B) have a dud and be able to unload it onto some shmoe for about what I paid for it. I would get a good Mac but, I need to get one of those real jobs or win the lotto for that to happen.
I get the thing from an ebayer with a really good rating and it delivers quick. I put in the SSD from the laptop. The drive is good, I haven’t had any trouble with it in the laptop (of which, thank the lord, I still have). The thing had 4 gigs of RAM in it and booted. It updated the OS and seem to run okay. So, I put in the 16 gigs of RAM from the haunted, evil 2011 iMac I had a while back. You remember that one? The one that took years off my life and caused me to weep into my Bass Ale… I wasn’t really sure if the RAM was the bad or the computer was pooched so, I saved the RAM and just about gave the computer away for $100 bucks. I was praying the evil that was present was in the computer and not the RAM. Well, COME ON people, its 16 GIGS of RAM. Although, now I hear that out loud and it reminds me of the girl who says “He’s SO WONDERFUL TO ME when he’s not hitting me.”
I stick the RAM in the machine. It seems to work. So, a breathe a sigh of cautious relief, back everything up and hope for the best. This was about three weeks ago, I do believe.
And here’s where the fun begins. Where the forces of nature conspire to cornhole me just for fun.
I wake this morning to Hurley, the big dumb dog, barking like crazy and running around because he has detected a threat he cannot localize. Is it outside? Is it in the bathroom? Is it in the trash can? Nope. Turns out to be the iMac beeping three tones over and over again. I had put it to sleep a day earlier and now it has decided that my life was going too well, and I needed to feel the futility of owning technology and expecting it to work.
I start the thing back up and it boots up. But. Now Safari won’t work right, things won’t download right, and it is doing all the things it’s evil, haunted predecessor had done. Greg, my Mac bud, says RAM. I suspect some hardware issue and was praying it was the RAM. It can’t be the SSD, since it operated pretty well, and the RAM DID COME FROM EVIL-MAC, so maybe that’s it.
I had decided to take it out and run it without the offending sticks and see if that makes a difference. I’m sweaty and surly from actually doing some tready time for the second time this week and the first time seriously in 8 months or so. And, of course, this is all I need – a fucked up mac.
I went and had a banana. At least that would give me about 3 minutes of joy before the inevitable realization I fucked myself yet again and start weeping in the corner.
I’ve taken the RAM out and reboot. It boots to the startup screen, with the progress bar getting about halfway done and then shutting down. FUCK ME RUNNING. It does this a couple of times and I realize that my life is just some test and when I’m reincarnated, I will be able to buy any Mac I want easily because of the suffering I have endured during this time.
I reboot EVIL-MAC, choosing option and switching startup disks. The fucker completely reboots and I First-Aid the thing.
I come up with (last four lines, or so):
“Rebuilding catalog B-Tree
File system check exit code is 8.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as
File system verify or repair failed.
Operation Failed…”
OH COME ON.
JESUS CHRIST. I see an afternoon of crying and googling ahead of me.
Fuck. My copy of Disk Warrior is too old, and I wonder if I just need to reinstall the OS. I wish there was a way to run a hardware check to see if its the logic board or batteries or some demon who has taken up residence in the SD slot.
Anyway. How’s YOUR day going?
