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2006 March 31st Friday 23:59PT - the final peaceful moments of March

The repair department at TDCurran called Wednesday afternoon, March 29th, and informed me that the G4 iMac had a dead logic board which would cost an exorbitant amount to replace. Parts and labor could total more than seven hundred dollars, so i decided against it. Instead, i asked them to remove the hard drive, sell me an external case with FireWire connections, and i'd just salvage the 80GB disk while resigning myself to the sad demise of the iMac. Meanwhile, Tony and i are happy using our G5 and G3 iMacs here at home, and i considered acquiring another G5 before they vanished. All of the Apple desktop products are shifting to Intel processors, which do not interest me, so i figured i'd probably purchase one of the last PowerPC models from TDCurran instead.

After sleeping all day Wednesday, then tending to those phone calls, we got up and made coffee as the sun was setting over Vancouver Island. I added some vanilla and cinnamon to the coffee grinds before brewing, then i served some sweet-potato pie for our early evening "breakfast"; we also shared a navel orange. A dozen harbor seals were sitting on the logs of the breakwater in front of our South Hill neighborhood, a helicopter and several other aircraft passed to and fro overhead, a few vessels were on the Bay, and the lights of the city twinkled as the cloudy skies grew dark.

We searched online to see what was still available for 20-inch iMacs with G5 PowerPC processors. I called the Apple Store and they were no longer selling them, so we'd need to find one at a dealer such as TDCurran, ClubMac, or some other store. We watched our videotape of Will & Grace, then lied around on my bed for a while. I decided to make a backup copy of my digital music library on one of my external FireWire drives where there was plenty of free space; it took more than an hour and a half to duplicate eighty-five gigabytes of MP3 files. I listened to some chill-out sessions from MixMaster Morris as light rain fell during the night and early Thursday morning, March 30th.

We slept until after noon on Thursday, then got up and made some Colombian Arabica coffee. I called TDCurran to ask their service department about disposal of the remaining portion of the dead G4 iMac which wouldn't be salvaged, and also to inquire about availability of G5 models. They no longer had any in stock; so i went to Clubmac's website instead, and ordered a new G5 with extra RAM which would be nearly free after a mail-in rebate offer. TDCurran called back later to let me know that my disk drive had been removed and installed in a new external FireWire case, and i could pick it up on Friday. The expense would be about fifty dollars for the case, about seventy dollars for labor, plus tax; adding to the previous cost of diagnostics, my total for the incident was going to amount to around one hundred eighty dollars altogether to convert a dead computer into a fine spare hard drive.

I also received another phonecall, as Clubmac wanted to confirm information on my account so they could complete the invoice and billing as they were ready to ship the new G5. After all the day's business was finished Tony and i listened to some music by MixMaster Morris as we made a simple dinner. I took some Marinol to stimulate my appetite, then we threw together a salad of colorful fresh vegetables with some ham slices, dressing, homemade garlic croutons, and seasonings. We had leftover sweet-potato pecan pie for dessert with more Brown & Haley Cashew Roca. Overall i was quite satisfied with Thursday's activities-- i was sad to part with the G4 iMac which had been such a nice personal computer for over three years, but i was pleased to recover the hard drive, and excited about the new G5 iMac on order.

I slept late on the morning of Friday the 31st. I got up around noon and had coffee with Tony, then paid the rent and went out on some errands. I drove along the shore of Bellingham Bay over to Bennett Drive then took Bakerview to Cordata where i stopped at the bank. Then i went to TDCurran and picked up my hard disk with its new MacAlly FireWire case. After i brought it home Tony and i tested it while connected to the G3 and G5 iMacs. Not only does it make an excellent backup drive, it actually still contains a bootable version of OS X 10.3.9 Panther which we could use as an alternate Startup disk for the G3.

As the sun was setting Tony said "Let me treat you to dinner." So i telephoned Papa Murphy's to order a couple huge pizzas, then he gave me some cash and i drove up the street to retrieve them. The guys working at the pizza parlor were such delicious and friendly fellows. I brought our dinner home, then took a capsule of prescription THC. We baked the "gourmet vegetarian" pie first, with lots of roma tomatoes, zucchini, onions, spinach, artichokes, mushrooms, white cheeses, and some extra seasonings which we sprinkled on top. This was followed by the "cowboy" pizza with yellow and white cheeses, beef, sausage, pepperoni, black olives, and we added some hot pepper flakes. After stuffing ourselves on these tasty creations we refrigerated all the leftovers, had some Ghirardelli "peppermint bark" chocolate for dessert, and cleaned up the kitchen. Then Tony slipped into his customary post-pizza diabetic coma on my bed in front of the television while i listened to the Groove Salad stream from SomaFM and fiddled with my G5 iMac.

Although i'd done nothing strenuous and had merely run a few errands i felt quite exhausted and thus spent the evening sitting around quietly. A couple times i crawled up next to Tony on the bed and spooned up against him. He mumbled the silly sorts of things people say when they're not really half-awake ("Was I snoring?... I was dreaming about hard drives... mmm... zzz...") I curled around him, relaxing in the warmth under the sheets; but i didn't want to disturb his slumber. I was somewhat restless (possibly from the Lamivudine, Nevirapine, and Tenofovir tablets i'd taken) so i kept returning to my chair, reading and writing and just spacing out as the gentle melodies played during the final peaceful moments of March.



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