… kerel panic and butterflies
What do you do when the evil dark shade of the dreaded kernel panic descends down your monitor? When upon restarting you get various symbols from question marks to warning circles? When utility programs don’t work? Lateral thinking is a flop? When even Derry says “hmmm .. not good”? You get out the box from the rafters in the garage, pack up the less than one-year old computer, bungie cord it onto a trolley, and head over to the nearest Apple store.
Never had a kernel panic? Consider yourself lucky. I’ve had them in the past, but generally a restart and a run through of a utility program saved the day. This was the first time it didn’t work. In fact, this is the first time in some 18 years that I had to box up and return a Macintosh. What is a kernel panic, you wonder? It’s a punch-you-in-the-gut Macintosh operating system crash (well, Unix) — kind of like the blue screen of death — that generally indicates a fatal internal error. Nice, huh?
Not two months ago one external 500 gig back up died. Now this. Sad, sad, sad. Luckily, I did have many important things backed up. But, unluckily, not all. I was planning to. Really. Because I work from more than one computer, I tend to back up stuff from one computer to another and then eventually put things onto DVD and remove them from one place or the other. Lesson learned? It’s time to stop making backups of various important things by dragging them from one computer to another and instead just start using Time Machine. Once I return from England, I will begin using it. Heck, as soon as I pick up my computer from the Apple store, hopefully before I leave, I’ll buy a Terabye drive. Promise.
But, today is a new day. While I should be finishing my Quilt National entry (which will be rejected as it always is), it was another absolutely glorious day. The type where I keep exclaiming, “What a beautiful day.” Rather than dwelling on the time I spent at the Apple store listening to my very well-trained and polite Apple genius tell me that my drive died (as in no kidding), me nearly fainting when I realized what client artwork on that machine wasn’t yet delivered, it seemed better to go look for butterflies. Sure, I’ll use any excuse. But, it was a beautiful day.
