Linkstew

I just spent another half hour on hold with Apple to finally put this mess to rest. The second (first) PowerBook order was cancelled, I have my PowerBook (dubbed Rincewind), I have my battery and my ram and my airport card, and it works. Hopefully, that's the end of this silliness and my spending time on hold with Apple and their very random music.

Hehe -- I finally got my PowerBook yesterday morning -- I've been playing with it so much that I haven't really been doing other things -- though I did get my homework done on it last night. Yesterday morning, I woke up, checked my mail, and right before I was going to leave for class I got a message saying "You have a package from Apple"... Well, at that point, the whole class idea was right out, and I headed up to the office to play with the PowerBook. RAM was a breeze to install, AirPort card was even easier to install, and the extra battery was trivial to install... And I'm not typing this update in OS X useless the AirPort in the office. Wireless net is too cool for words... It's just so... free.

The funny (?) part, however, is that today when I got into the office I had an email that said that Apple had tried to call at around 9:30 this morning... So I call them and speak to a representative, and he claims that my order is under review. I look at the web page and find that my order hasn't been processed yet. I then looked at the PowerBook I got the email on and the PowerBook I was browsing the web on... Then I realized that the order in question was a different order than the one that yielded this PowerBook... In other words, somehow in all the mess of dealing with the 80 credit cards, I had a second order placed and filled, while the first was overlooked -- which means that if I had an extra $2000, I could get a second PowerBook for the discounted price. Too bad I don't have any extra money, eh?

Oh, and if you haven't seen the way the power lights of all current Macintoshes throb when they're asleep, then you're missing out. Get to a CompUSA and check it out.

This morning, I'm pretty sure I actually paid for the PowerBook. This was the fifth card I tried. After the first two cards didn't work, there was a pair from my parents that I tried that didn't work. The first because it had been disabled after a copy of the number was lost, and the second because the expiration date was unknown. And then, finally, on the fifth card (one from my parents with a high interest rate), I was able to pay for the PowerBook! Maybe I'll still get it this week. I'm vaguely concerned, however, that suggesting that nothing else could possibly go wrong might set off another taiwanese earthquake. I'm not sure I could live with that kind of guilt.

update: I just got an email from Apple saying my order shipped tomorrow (They didn't actually say "tomorrow", they said "10/02/2000", but that's still tomorrow). That's right, past tense. Yeah Yeah Yeah -- Time Zone Differences and all... It's still funny, though. (FYI: PowerBooks are manufactured and shipped from Taiwan)

Hahaha... Of course everything couldn't be well with the powerbook mixup yet. That'd be too easy. Hahaha... No, this other credit card I tried was declined, too. So tomorrow I'll have to call up and find out why this one was declined, then call Apple and arrange to send them a farking check, and then wait a week for them to get it and then wait a week for my damnable laptop. Ohoho...

I just spent an hour or so on hold with the Apple Store tonight. Tonight is friday night. I was on hold between 7 and 8 or so -- making it between, say, 7 and 10 across the U.S. People are that willing to get through to talk to the Apple Store? Well, I was. I got through eventually... Well, I got through to a "call director" who put me on hold while I waited to talk to a "credit card specialist"... Why I couldn't go straight to the credit card specialist was is beyond me, of course. Guess that would have been too easy. Anyway, I eventually got through to stephen the credit card specialist, who had to go talk to another specialist and left me dangling on hold for longer still. Uhh.. Anyway, eventually I got it worked out. Hopefully I'm still on track to get my PowerBook next week. God I hope I get it next week. Argh, so damned annoying.

Hahaha oh that's so funny. It wasn't my battery for which the payment didn't go through... It was the source of all my troubles, that powerbook. The problem? I have a limit of $700 per day that I can spend with my card. $1945 > $700. Shit. So now I'm waiting on my dad to call back tonight and find out if he has a card I can use... If I have to mail Apple a check it'll probably take them a week to get it processed and ironed out before they even place my order, which means it'd be like two weeks before I got it, which would... ARGH! And of course, now I have 256 megs of RAM, an airport card, and an extra battery lying around that I can't do anything with. And I thought my troubles were over... Turns out they're just beginning.

Though I guess it's reassuring to know that Apple got the 190.

Good News: FedEx picked up the PowerBook 190 today and took it to it's final resting place, hopefully somewhere cold.

Bad news, the tracking number Apple gave me for FedEx doesn't seem to work at fedex.com, and I haven't received any email from Apple about the rest of the process. I guess I'll wait a week and see what happens and if my credit card gets billed, etc. It'll take at least that long, anyway. All the same, I went ahead and ordered extra RAM for the 'book, so I'll have it and be ready to go when it gets here hopefully next week.

Argh! I've now spent ten hours waiting for FedEx to pick up the PowerBook. I've now spent 6 hours (and counting) on hold with Apple. And guess what I still have, and what Apple doesn't have? KLFJlkasjdgflkjasdfklasjdf. This is fucking ridiculous. All I want is to give them a PowerBook for them to destroy and some Money. Is that too much to ask? I just want to give them stuff! I just want a new PowerBook so I can use freaking OS X!

And the worst part is, as frustrated as I'm getting, I'm not going to get so frustrated as to not keep hounding after this deal, because I want that PowerBook.

update: So I spent another hour on hold with Apple, and then about half an hour setting things up. I gave this lady all the info that I gave to the first person I talked to. The difference this time, however, was that she actually told me how much I'd be charged and gave me a FedEx tracking number for the pickup, which was scheduled for tomorrow. She also said that once Apple got my PowerBook, there'd probably be a week to a week and a half before I got (maybe before they shipped) my new PowerBook. Ugh damn long annoying wait. It'll have been more than a month by then.

I don't know whose fault it was that the FedEx pickup never happened. I do know that I skipped class waiting for it, and spent another two hours on hold waiting to get through to Apple to find out what happened (for a total of about five hours of hold so far for this whole deal), and in general, I've wasted a lot of my time. It's very annoying. And now I've got to spend another afternoon waiting for for FedEx to come pick up the 'book, only this time it's going to be next Monday, so I probably won't get my shiny new PowerBook until the week after (the week of the 2nd). Argh!!!

Here I am, sitting in the mostly empty rescomp office, waiting for FedEx to pick up my PowerBook 190, so that they can bring me a shiny and new PowerBook G3. Wait Wait Wait. It seems like this process has been incredibly more trouble than it should have been, but that's okay, because I'm getting a deal on a powerbook because of it. Woohoo!

Wouldn't it figure that the two hours that I'm out of the office today, Apple calls back about the PowerBook -- a call that I'd been waiting for for nearly three weeks. So when I got back to the office, I immediately get on the phone, and there I sat on hold for two hours before I finally gave up and went home. Tomorrow right after class I'm going to get right back on the phone, too. Ergh, that's damned annoying. I just want my PowerBook. Is that too much to ask?