Another Definition of Hell

Not really hell, of course—there are certainly many things in this world that are worse—but today was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, nonetheless. This morning, my MacBookPro began making a regular beeping sound around 4 or 5am—when it was turned off. I thought this was very strange (and annoying). I did a bit of research on the Apple website this morning and came up with few leads: I found one thread on the MacBookPro discussion group which suggested that it might be an impending hard drive failure, but nothing definitive. I called Apple tech support and the guy I spoke to suggested I take it to the Apple store and let the folks at the Genius Bar take a look (since he'd have to charge me $50 to try to diagnose it over the phone as I'd let my Apple Care lapse in November).

I guess the guy doing tech support forgot what day it is today.

The Apple Store in SoHo had a line wrapping around the block of people waiting for their new iPhone 3G (including my friend, Carl); because I wasn't there for an iPhone, I got to bypass that. There must have been well over 50 employees working inside the store—over a dozen of them hanging around on the ground floor with little to do, truth be told, but they all had to be ready for any iPhone questions/problems/directions. Fortunately, Woody, my now-favorite Apple employee, was able to make some connections and hook me up with a Genius to look at my beeping laptop. Unfortunately, my Genius (whose name I've forgotten) was stymied; basically, he guessed that I was probably right about my impending hard drive failure. So I came home, ordered a new one from OWC (the best Apple parts supplier in the world, imho) and now... I have to wait... until it arrives... while Catherine and I listen to my computer beep... every 4-5 minutes.... day and night.... until Monday, at the earliest...

So maybe I've now found two definitions....