Apologies and A Lesson Learned

I'll start this tale with some lovely photos for you to view since the story itself might be boring but there is a need to tell you what happened. Also I need you to email me with your blog address if you were on my list on the blog. I can add the ones from my Google Reader but they are not necessarily the same. So if you want me to put your blog on here, let me know and I'll check it against my other list. I need to get busy on it soon.

~*~

First of all, I need to apologize for not keeping up with the blogs I love and check each and every day. Also for Pink Saturday and not visiting the participants, especially the ones who visit me. But life can throw you curve balls and we can do some really stupid things sometimes! ME......for instance.

This is why we have used Apple Macs for about 25 years now.

On 8/29/09 the new OSX came out: Snow Leopard, OSX or 10.6 to be exact. I ran to the MacLife store in Boise to buy it for $29.99 and came home and installed it. That same day I received my new HP Printer all-in-one and installed it. It didn't work properly and I called HP and asked for help. That sweet woman stayed on the line with me for about 2 hours and doing numerous tweaks and fixes and nothing got the printer to work correctly. She checked with her higher-ups and they said the drivers weren't up-to-date yet since Apple released Snow Leopard about 4 or 5 weeks early. So since I wanted to use my new super-duper faster printer and scanner, I went back and installed OSX 10.5 or just plain Leopard instead of Snow Leopard (SL).

Here's where I need to eat a bit of humble pie for telling friends and my ebay groups and anyone that will listen to this ol' lady to THINK before you do anything with your computer. When I re-installed Leopard, everything was as it would be when you reinstall any new Operating System or get a new computer: pretty much nothing personal on there or as I should say: zip, nada, nothing but the original OS just waiting for you to add your email accounts, PhotoShop, Office for Mac, photos, personal things, etc. But.............

I also subscribe to Carbonite because you just never know when something will happen. I also have an external HD. I also have Time Machine—exclusive to Apple Macs. So I wasn't too worried. But as luck would have it, all this transpired on a weekend (doesn't everything significant in your life to do with "business" happen on a friday night at 5:01 PM?!?! It usually does for me. I also have a laptop which I try to sync with my desktop since we travel with our laptops and I've learned from experience I want them both to have all the same things on them. So I'm pretty much covered. Except for my photos on iPhoto. They may not be on both computers.

So monday morning, 8/31/09 I'm on the phone with Apple getting their help. They came to the rescue magnificently. I always, always get a representative who is kind, considerate, patient, understands exactly what I need and walks me through it and then gives me their name and phone number and extension AND their work email to call them back or email if need be. I've tried it and they are back with me in just a matter of hours but they guarantee to be back within 24 hours. I've read where they rank #1 in customer service and they absolutely do with me!

Then monday afternoon I was back on with Apple again. They were on the line with me for a total of about 5-6 hours over the course of friday, saturday and monday and just shined magnificently. They never kept sending me to someone else. THEY did the trolling if they needed to get extra help.I'm going right to the bottom line here.

My Mac is restored to exactly what it was and what was on there. I've had to do a lot of reloading of the applications/programs such as PhotoShop, Office for Mac, iLife and Quicken (let me say here that the Quicken rep. was a true gentlemen also!) gave me a code to go in and download Quicken 2007 again for free. I wasn't charged a penny for any of this, not a penny! Just the hardest working reps at each place I went. It's been frustrating because I messed up by not properly taking off the new OSX and going back to the last version. But even Carbonite (whose help I didn't need after all because my Mac did it ALL!) was astounding in helping me. Now, I ask you, when in the world do other reps give you their number and extension and email to let them know how things are??? I am astounded with their help in this trial I've put myself through.

All this was going on as I was preparing to head out for our last camping trip of the year. Squeeeeeal!! All done for this year anyway. I'm still getting my blog back in order because during all this (my stupid button was on overdrive here, chicks!) I inadvertently was going to try a different template but while working in a browser that I don't usually work in I hit "save" and just about passed out when I saw that it went ahead and changed my blog template. But because I saved a copy of my template on my computer I could put it back in BUT things went a bit wacky then. Some of my widgets didn't appear, ones that did appear were different graphics/photos from the "title" of the sidebar gadget and it wiped out my blogroll. Yes, I can rebuild it and will but first things first. Hubby's desire to drag me off to the "wilds of Idaho" outweighed pretty much everything else at that point. Plus while doing all this I had 2 new molars crowned and was experiencing pain since the temporaries were put on 8/9/09. Could life get any more hectic? I don't even want to know!!!!