Grrrrrrr

[hrj]

Once again, I've wasted a good portion of a perfectly good Saturday dealing with a misbehaving laptop. It had been working fairly well for a couple of weeks after coming back the last time then started randomly freezing or crashing. For about the last week it's been doing it with increasing frequency until I counted about 20 re-boots in the last 24 hours. So I managed a full backup then took it in to the Apple store once again. Once again they ran full diagnostics on the hardware and software without finding any problem. Then, on a hunch based on some of the previous crashes, I picked the machine up by grasping it gently but firmly by the front corners. Instant freeze. "Ah hah!" I cried to the Apple Genius Bar consultant and he busily started writing a repair ticket. I hinted broadly that, given that this was essentially the same problem they had in the shop for at the beginning of the month, maybe it was time to start thinking about simply replacing it with a new machine.

Then I spent several hours trying to restore my e-mail files to the desktop, to no avail. The mailbox folders restore perfectly … and claim to be empty. I found several threads on the Apple support boards describing my exact problem (restoring from backup; folders restore but not contents). They all recommended making sure you copy one particular folder and one particular file from your backup -- at which point the clients on the support boards either announce that it solved the problem (which it doesn't for me), or announce that it doesn't solve the problem … at which point no further advice is offered. So I settled for starting with a clean mail program and hope that either the laptop will come back with its files intact, or that the mail folders will restore more successfully to the laptop than they did to the desktop.

Dinner last night with J&I was quite delicious and enjoyable. Who wants to be next on my dinner invitation list?