As I type these words, my heart is heavy. I lost a very dear friend earlier tonight, one who was almost like a brother to me. This compadre was by my side during the best of times, as well as the worst of times, always eager to offer help when I needed it the most, as well as put a smile on my face during my darkest hour. Yet like all siblings, he was also a source of great aggravation, enough to make me want to throw him out a window. Literally. And the funny thing is, I was actually in the midst of making preparations for his new caretaker, to make the long-awaited, final good-bye. But I was not at all prepared to part ways in such an unexpected manner.
Basically, my eMac, the trusty Mac that I have relied upon for the past four years, is dead. Rest in peace “Giga Drive” (that was his name).
It was my second Mac, which replaced my iMac DV Special Edition (aka “Mega Drive”); its G3 processor, 8 megs of video ram, and lack of disc burning was starting to become a real burden by then, circa 2004. I chose the eMac over the then red-hot G4 iMac because of the dirt cheap price (which is why so many of my friends, such as John, Farel, Raina, and even Katie would all own one; the funny thing about Macs is how they’re the computers that artists prefer, yet most are pretty poor, while Macs are usually expensive as hell, hence the eMac’s popularity), though more importantly, it was loosely based upon the design of Apple’s final CRT Studio Display that I absolutely adored. Both reasons were more then enough to ignore all the not so hot things I had heard about the machine, most of which would turn out to be true; my system would give me plenty of headaches over its lifetime, though compared to many others, I got off pretty light.
But owning the red-headed step child of the Mac family (remember the “Hasta la vista, CRT!” proclamation by Steve Jobs that one Macworld, only to be proven wrong by the eMac? lulz) was a source of pride to a certain degree, especially when I would get into fights over at YayHooray for being an “asshole” for owning one. I was seriously called one, no joke… this was when I was asking for helping when my system began exhibiting problems shortly after installing 10.4, Tiger, which I do believe was the first real source of my troubles (hey, would do you expect, it was Yay fucking Hooray). In the end, the eMac did its job (the G4 was a fine little chip), plus looked hella awesome while doing it, or at least trying to (I still say its one of the sexiest machines Apple has ever produced).
Anyway, four years later, and another OS is here, one that I’m too chicken shit to even attempt to put on my system. Plus the new Intel iMac with the brush metal looks totally hawt, with an LCD screen that can finally compete with CRT, and more importantly, Katie also has an eMac, one that’s the next generation after mine, meaning a faster processor and USB 2.0 (shitty 1.2 was another reason why I want to hurl my system off a bridge so many times). So having two around the apartment would be overkill, hence the decision to part ways with mine. All day today I’ve been dealing with assorted crazy people on Craigslist, trying to negotiate terms (I love how everyone types in all caps and no even bothers to spell anything correctly, like the one dude who used “cumputer” three times in one email). Last night, after backing all my shit up (while I save up money for a new system, I’m going to utilize both Katie’s system and my new MacBook from work), I began the lengthy process of throughly wiping everything clean from my hard drive, cuz I don’t want anyone to have real, stone cold evidence of how deeply my obsession with Hermione went, which meant both zero-ing it and also doing an 8-way pass of writing junk files all over everything. Zeroing was done by the time I woke up, so I began the 8-way pass before heading out. And when I got home… it had barely gone past the point that I last saw it at. I then decided to start over, but when doing so, the Disc Utility told me that I risk rendering the hard drive useless. But what other choice did I have? Besides, I’ve managed to get away with “risky” behavior during all my Mac tinker years, totally unscathed.
Yet I believe that’s what did it in. Though I didn’t know anything at first; around 11:00 sharp, I finally made contact with a dude that seemed normal and actually cool, who was willing to stop by my place later tonight to pick the computer up (the dude really wanted the system and get it before anyone else). Right then I began to finally wonder why the 8-way pass was again taking forever; I restarted the machine, and got the dreaded flashing question mark on a folder, then popped in my hardware diagnostic disc, which spelled out what was diagnosis conclusively. He was pronounced dead at around 11:20 pm, March 12, 2008. Katie even played a sad song to mark his passing. It was “Cold Hard Times” by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood.
Fuck. And I could have really used the $200 too. Christ, first my Wii going haywire, and now this. Perhaps I can get some money for its ram…
The funny thing is, not too long afterwards, I got a call from Farel, to discuss his upcoming trip to NYC, and eventually I began to hear about all the problems that his eMac was giving him, some of which I had never heard of before. But yeah, as much as I’m kinda not surprise to have mine die on me, it still sucks. I will truly miss my little buddy.
It’s actually been a shitty day over-all, though I do have one bright spot: I finally got my hands on some Japanese slime porn! So I guess everything’s gonna be alright.
