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New Mac!!!

Matt 8 December 2010 Blog Comments Off

Finally, after months and months of frustration, tearing my hair out and constant trips to the Apple store, I now have a brand spanking new MacBook. For free, obviously. :D

To fill you in, last December I got a MacBook to do some A-Level coursework on. During the last 12 months, it has had to go into repair SIX times. In order, crack on the keyboard, crack on the hinges, optical drive not writing DVD+DL (Dual Layer DVD’s), battery gone flat to the point where it would just suddenly drain, sound problems, and the CTRL key jamming which meant I had to use a Dell USB keyboard instead of the built in one.

Now, that’s all over. I now have a latest model MacBook, with AppleCare until November 2013. Not much different to my old MacBook, only things that are better is slightly faster processor, more cache and longer battery life. (Not that 7 hours was short).

Now I’m hoping that this one will be reliable. I’ve cursed myself haven’t I.

Another tiresome weekend passes

Matt 29 November 2010 Blog 6

This last weekend has been well, tiring and fun. Cold as well.

As usual, my weekend starts bright and early at 4am. Hour to get up, get dressed, have something to eat and get out to walk 2.5 miles to work. I was initially expecting it to be freezing cold, it was surprisingly alright. Cold it was, but no chilling wind. Walking for 40 mins in –2C whilst trying not to go ice skating (it had snowed the previous night as well) was more boring than expected.

And there starts my superextended shift at Tesco. Usually lasting from 6-12, I was begged pretty much to stay on until 2pm. By then I’m worn out. It’s then another 40 minute walk back to the flat since the Ulink bus wouldn’t be much quicker than me walking. This time I was listening to Hub Radio on my phone, listening to me being mocked about my lack of taste for Christmas music (*shudders*).

3pm, thought now I’m back at the flat I could relax. Nope. My MacBook, which I got back from repair #5 just last week developed another problem. This time the CTRL key on the keyboard was jammed. This effectively made my MacBook redundant and useless since on OS X, holding the CTRL key acts as a right click, so anything on the mouse is right click and right click + scroll = zoom etc, and I couldn’t type properly. Windows, can’t even get past the password prompt so that’s that.

An hour or two later, I’m on the bus back into Bristol centre to the Apple store to moan and grumble about the latest problem with my doomed MacBook. Some good news at last, the MacBook is being replaced for free since the number of problems I’ve had to deal with has been one (or five) too many. Only snag is due to the ordering process, and because my MacBook is the second newest model, not the newest, they’ve got to order a new one in. By new one, I mean a brand new latest MacBook. They just can’t give me one from the store. They have to order it in. It sucks. It’s the middle of the Christmas Shopping Pavlava. It’s going to be a big wait. Meanwhile I have a Macbook that I can’t use. I’m so glad I took out that Three mobile broadband and netbook offer! Go go impulse.

To finish things off for that day, I’m “producing” (Quoted from Alex Wyatt) Alex’s radio show. By that I mean I’m on his show, but for the first hour he doesn’t put my mic on, my netbook decides to disconnect from the internet half way through a song ruining a track live (I blame Dell) and other random mockery as per the norm.

Hello Sunday, 7.44am. Phone call to ask where am I in 10 mins. Whoops. Today I went gliding for the first time. Fun experience, also an opportunity for me to go home since the gliding club UWE uses is near my hometown. (http://www.cotswoldgliding.co.uk/). Didn’t know what to expect from the day, but I enjoyed myself and got into the air fine. I also had the rents (parents) watch me as well since they were nearby.

Come back around 6pm, thought I could relax. Nope. I’m dragged into playing Call of Duty Zombies and Left 4 Dead. Fun.

Final Note: A blog post where I’m actually blogging and not really ranting about my sh*t life. Life will never be the same!

You know your day is going well….

Matt 12 October 2010 Blog, Rant 6

You get days where one big thing just makes your whole day miserable and worthless. You also get days which are even worse, when everything doesn’t seem to be working, and it’s small little things which just ends up driving you bonkers. Today is one of those days, and I’m not liking it much.

At the moment, it’s not university work related, I’m on top of that. Infact after this blog post I’m off to the library since I need to get away from this flat ASAP.

Now let’s briefly go over the small (and possibly insignificant) things that are going wrong. First, netbook doesn’t like me first thing in the morning. Turn it off and on again, problem sorted. Four hours later, call from the Apple store on my MacBook. New battery done, but the underside needs replacing. Will take a few days for the part to arrive. Annoying but bearable situation. Then I read a frankly disturbing message stating that my parents are really concerned about me, that they don’t know who I am any more, that my facebook messages don’t match my personality and they think I’m not doing the work. Now that is not what you want to read midway through your day. Then a drink gets spilt on my bag.

More lectures, then I get ‘home’ I feel hungry. As usual, the kitchen is a state with pots and pans everywhere, dirty jugs and bowls with mash and cold water in the sink, and my utensils being used again! I’m also finding someone keeps taking my canned drinks. I then try and tidy up, and I smash two plates because everything just falls down from the drying rack. I clean up the mess, notice the recycling bins are overflowing, no-one’s doing anything about it, and they’re all playing guitar hero. What a surprise. At this point, I complain a little bit, no-one’s taking any notice, and I give up.

Just to add insult, my Dell desktop’s hard drive packs in. <sarcasm>Like I never saw that one coming</sarcasm>. This is the point where I’m walking out the door

Before anyone complains this sounds a little bit silly, emoish, that i’m making a mountain out of a molehill sort of thing – please try being in my shoes before you assume.

Now I’m going to the library just to simply get away from Flat 109 since all it’s doing is making me feel ill. I’m also hungry, but since I really cannot be arsed to clean up other people’s leftovers and they won’t do it (in fact they’re all going out surprise surprise) then I can’t be bothered to eat. I was looking forward to my ducks legs and rice as well.

Rant and cooling exercise over, now I’m doing work. Imagine that, I’m keeping up with my work.