Harddrive update

So first a major, big, giant, THANK-YOU to everyone who replied to my previous post about my laptop harddrive with thoughts of sympathy and helpful ideas. You really made me feel better.

Second:

IT WASN'T MY HARDDRIVE!!!

::Omaha does the happy catdancer dance!!::

Yup. Apparently, it was a confusion between my harddrive and my CD-ROM drive. My cd-rom drive is broken...it still reads, but the mechanism that keeps the spring from pushing the tray out all of the time is broken. So I keep it taped. However, that makes it difficult because I have to still push the Official Eject Button (TM) before allowing the tray to open when ejecting a CD in order to convince Leda (my laptop) that the CD is in fact not there anymore. Otherwise, Leda continues to try to access it.

Well, I got lazy, and the last time I ejected a CD, I didn't push the eject button fast enough, and Leda kept trying to access the drive anyway. And I was too lazy to fix that quite yet (because it meant undoing the tape and then pushing the button while the tray was still being held closed by me, then putting the tape back in place...or probably new tape...it was just a pain in the butt.)

So, when Leda crashed yesterday, and tried to boot back up, she got a little confused by something (not sure what) and got stuck in some kind of loop. I had to remove the battery, then replace it, and boot her up again. This time, all I heard was a "whir, click". Which, on a noisy bus, sounds not like a harddrive *and* a cd-rom drive trying to vi for who's on first, but like a harddrive that just had a fatal failure (most likely physical). Thinking that it was just the harddrive not starting up because I didn't push the button long enough, I tried again, and got the same thing. I chose not to repeat it a third time for fear that I was now damaging the harddrive...and my data.

I took it into a local shop (Empire Electronics in Burien...apparently I find out a big name in the local Mac community) that had an Apple certified specialist there, rather than an Apple store, but since he was closing down shortly he wouldn't be able to look at it until this morning. Sure enough, about 8:30, just before I was walking out the door with Kouryou-chan to take her to school, he calls to give me the good news...my harddrive, and my data, are safe!

I danced with Kouryou-chan for a moment, then we were out the door to her school. So now I type this LJ up on Leda, and am a *very* happy kitty.

And yes, I spent this morning, after I picked Leda up and came home, backing *all* of my data up on my desktop (I have a friend up from California for WinHEC who's a Machead and he showed me the freeware he uses and helped me do it...thanks so much Peter!!!). So all of my data up to today is now safe in another location. :D

Butt of the Tiger...

Ganked from my good pal technoshaman:

Apparently Tiger Direct Inc. has decided to sue Apple over the use of the name "Tiger".

Now, not only is this a joke because they *just* filed the damn thing and are requesting an injunction in time for OS 10.4 "Tiger" to roll out, but everyone has known about 10.4 for, like, forever. So why didn't these dweebs start this many, many months ago? Why, for the money, of course. They're hoping that Apple will just pay them to make them go away, I'm sure.

But here's the funniest part of all. They claim to own the trademark to the name "Tiger". Anyone with a few brain cells to rub together can totter on down to the USPTO website and do a search on the word "Tiger". And when one does, one finds that *no one* owns a registered trademark on the name "Tiger". Four different companies have filed for trademarks on the name that are still live filings, but none have been granted yet. And unless Tiger Direct Inc, which is a Florida company, has suddenly moved to New York, Ohio, Isreal, or China, they haven't made any of the filings, either.

So, what, they thought Apple's lawyers wouldn't do a trademark search? They thought no one would figure out their little scheme and catch on to the fact that maybe companies like, oh, Triumph have been using the damn name for years? They didn't wonder why Apple hadn't filed for the trademark themselves???

Don't know about you, but I've got no temptation whatsoever to use this company's products or services anytime in the future.