My New Mac mini
Back in October, I wrote about My Leopard Installation Adventure, but before that, I explained why I was becoming an early adopter of the new Macintosh operating system, which was, namely, that my Mac mini was broken and I hoped Leopard could fix it.
One week ago today, I finally admitted that it couldn’t.
Here’s what happened. On Thursday night last week, instead of just putting my computer to sleep, I decided to shut it down. It had been weeks since I’d shut down the computer and I figured, “Hey, why not give it a reboot?” So I shut it down and went to bed.
On Friday morning, I woke up, and after reading on the couch for an hour, I walked into my office, pressed the power button, heard that musical Macintosh chime, and walked into the bathroom to take a piss. When I came back, instead of seeing my desktop, I saw what every Mac user fears: a blinking question mark.
If you don’t use a Mac, let me explain it to you. A blinking question mark at start-up means that your computer can’t find your operating system (or more specifically, it can’t find your “start-up disc”). It’s like waking up in the morning and forgetting who you are. Basically, my Mac mini woke up that Friday morning with amnesia, and it was asking me, “Hey, who am I?”
Now, being a dedicated Mac user for almost 15 years (thank you, Josh Bloom), this is something I’ve experienced before. Normally, it’s not too big of a deal. You simply insert a CD with an operating system into your disc drive, the computer says, “Oh, okay!” and boom, it starts up off of that. Once it’s running, you go into your System Preferences, select your start-up disc (which is usually installed on your hard-drive), and restart. Usually, that’s how it works.
Of course, sometimes that doesn’t work. But even then, there’s still a bunch of steps you can take. Apple’s got a whole list of things to try on the support section of its website. Since, as I’ve mentioned, my Mac mini had been broken for months, I pretty much had the list memorized. I went through all the steps. And when that didn’t work, I went through them all again. And when that didn’t work, I tried one more time.
And lo and behold, it worked.
This was after four hours.
Four hours!
As most of you know, I work over the Internet for a company in Florida. I also go to grad school full-time, and a large portion of that schoolwork is writing a novel. And for those four hours, all I could think was: My novel’s on there; my novel’s on there; my novel’s on there; my novel’s on there; my novel’s on there; I need coffee; my novel’s on there; etc.
Anyway, the point is this: I live on my computer. I’m on it about a twelve hours a day, no shit, and not having my computer available for four hours is like not having legs for four hours. I simply can’t survive that way.
So after a little bit of financial rationalization and a conversation with my wife, I went to Apple.com and bought myself a brand new Mac mini.
“A new Mac mini!” you scream. “The same friggin’ computer that gave you all that trouble in the first place! You went out and bought another one! Seriously man, I mean, I read your blog everyday, so I knew you were kinda dumb, but now I see that I totally underestimated you. You’re not kinda dumb; you’re a fucking moron.”
What am I supposed to say to that?
Well, I’ll say this:
- I wasn’t going to buy anything but a Mac, and the Mac mini is the cheapest Mac they make.
- In the past three years, the Mac mini has been upgraded significantly, so the Mac mini I bought is more tested than the Mac mini I replaced.
- The new Mac mini has a DVD-burner, where the previous only had a (long-time broken) CD-burner, so I am now able to save all the….files, yeah, that’s it…that I download.
- Did I mention it’s the cheapest Mac they make?
The question, now, is what am I going to do with old Mac mini? First, I have to get the thing booted up. It’s still stuck in a blinking question mark state, and I can’t do anything with it until I get beyond that point. But once I do…what am I gonna do?
Right now, I’m thinking of turning it into my back-up hard drive. I know, I know. Now you’re saying, “Kyle! You stupid putz! You bought a new one because you couldn’t trust your old one, and now you’re gonna use the old one as your back-up! It’s going to be the one you depend on if the new one fails?! Seriously, man. I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot.”
To which I respond: I won’t use it as a back-up until I feel safe with it again. Once I get past the blinking question mark, I’m going to erase the entire hard-drive, partition it, and then put it to work as just a secondary storage device. Once it’s done that duty for a month or so…then, and only then, will it become my back-up drive.
But for now, it’s nothing but a clean white square sitting on my desk. And on the opposite side, purring away, is my new Mac mini Intel Core Duo. And ooh, do I love it.