Movies and Macs

Just got back from seeing “Hellboy”… It’s a pretty fun romp with all of the prerequisites for a good SciFi flick including some really nice special effects

We, Zeze and I, went to a new theater up in Woodbridge at the Potomac Mills Mall which was really nice. It’s actually unusual to find a theater anymore that has both a nice screen and a working sound system… Of course the reason we were there is a tale in and of itself…

See, last night I set up my laptop and got this white line though the screen which is usually indicative of a blown transistor… Something that is expensive to fix requiring the replacement of the screen.

After backing up all of my data and booting off of the OSX install CD, the line went away and stayed gone for the rest of the night. (odd)

So, thinking that my mystery line might have been caused by OS corruption, I reloaded everything… Today at work it popped back up for a few seconds and vanished again. Ok, so it’s time to get the laptop swapped out…

Of course it does this exactly four days after the CompUSA warranty ends, but Apple has a great warranty system and it’s not a big deal… Except that I have to send the laptop to Cupertino California for 3-4 weeks…

Well, Apple also has these big stores all over the US and there just happen to be two of them here in Virginia; so off we go to the mall-city of Tyson’s Corner.

Now, you hear me go on and on about the number of people living here these days, but nothing I say can prepare a person for the sheer numbers of folks you will run into both on the highway and in a mall. Getting from here to Tyson’s Corner took nearly two hours of creeping though bumper to bumper traffic, then once we made it to the mall it was bumper to bumper people.

Well, the folks at the Apple Store weren’t exactly sure what the problem is either as it’s sporadic at best, and simply refused to manifest itself again in the presence of a technician, but they logged it and recommended that I remove the 512 megs of RAM that I added. I’m also going to snap a photo of the problem for them…

And – presto:

So I guess I’ll close up for the night, I’m heading over to the local theater to see “Home on the Range” tomorrow.

Hmm, it’s midnight now so I suppose I’ll head off to bed. G’Night out there…

Nik KershawWouldn’t It Be Good