At long last, I managed to get a new hard drive to replace the one that horked up a big hairball back at the end of April (just as I tried to upgrade to Mac OS 10.4) I've got 120GB to play with on here, but better than that, I'm now up and running on Tiger.


There were a few bumps in the road. First was my mouse didn't work. After a moment of panic, I examined the mouse and saw that the cord had severed (though the outer casing was still intact). I remembered that a couple months ago the mouse took a nasty fall behind the desk and became wedged. I must have severed the cord trying to un-wedge it. So for the first several hours, I'd bumble around using keyboard commands, no biggie. Until I hit the second bump in the road: Dialing into my ISP, it connects but authentication keeps failing. Works just dandy on Hamish (the iBook), but not on the iMac.


I poked around online to see if there were any known issues about authentication failure when upgrading to 10.4 and left a message at my ISP's tech support line (though I'm not hopeful there because they're establishing a track record of NOT calling me back when things don't work). Since I needed a new mouse, I headed for the Apple Store and signed up for a chat at the Genius Bar to see if they knew of any authentication issues.


Most of the time when I stop by the Genius Bar, I get a nice, knowledgeable person who explains what the problem likely is and gives me tips for trying to diagnose/fix it myself (but invites me to bring it in if my efforts fail). Yesterday was NOT one of those times. He surveyed his screen and looked thoroughly pissed that he had to waste his "genius" on this question. He looked up and asked if I had brought the iMac in. "Well, no...I was just coming here to buy a mouse and thought I'd ask if there were any known authentication issues with people upgrading to Tiger. And, to be fair, I signed up for an appointment, rather than try to cram into the queue and usurp someone else's appointment."


Evidently, that was the wrong answer. "We need to SEE it. We need to test your Ethernet port because there might be something wrong with it..." At that point I tuned him out because I don't appreciate being talked down to like some idiot.


When he stopped lecturing me, I asked him about replacing the mouse. The store's only Apple Mouse offerings were the new Mighty Mouse or the wireless one. Since I didn't have >$50 to spend on a mouse, I was looking for less-expensive alternatives. He insisted that they had the "regular" Apple Mouse on the shelves and it was only $29.99. When I said I only saw the Mighty Mouse and the wireless mouse over there, he rolled his eyes. I decided to just leave the Genius Bar before I had to slap him.


So I went to the checkout and asked about these $29.99 mice (mouses?). The girl looked on her system but said they were sold out and the mouse discontinued. Bless her heart, she tried to be helpful and looked on the CompUSA site but said they didn't have it either. Since I wasn't thrilled with their other mouse offerings, I decided to stop at CompUSA to see what they had.


What CompUSA had was a shelf FULL of $29.99 Apple mousies. I immediately adopted one.


As to the authentication problem, I still haven't figured that out. However, I dug out my old Airport base station and hooked it up, just to see what would happen. Oddly enough, the airport card in here, which quit working 3 years ago, suddenly works again. I'm not going to question it: I shall just simply appreciate it.


Last bump in the road is reloading some of my programs. Some of them (like BBEdit) insist on my having the OS9 Classic environment on my system before they'll install. And I was hoping to NOT have to deal with OS9. So, I'll either have to bite the bullet and install OS9 or buy a new copy of BBEdit (I think with my student discount I can get a good deal on it).


So today I'm playing with a copy of Ecto to make this blog post. So far I'm liking it; it's got some cool features, like adding what's currently playing on iTunes to my post (see below) and Technorati tags. Next on the agenda is trying to get the film scanner up and running (sans OS9), and I think I might make myself a little Geek Merit Badge for installing my new hard drive myself (these older iMacs are not the easiest things to work in, I'll tell you whut).



Postcard from the album "Still Feel Gone" by Uncle Tupelo

Technorati Tags: Mac OS 10.4, upgrading