For anyone interested my brand new day old Mac Mini is going to the place that they send useless pieces of electronics soon. You may remember that I have had a problem with it unless of course you are suffering from Alzheimer’s of something.

Yesterday I spoke to Apple customer service because as you may recall the retailer unhelpfully suggested as they were busy counting my money and washing their hands of my problem. Of course I was dreading speaking to Apple customer service – let’s face it the word ‘service’ doesn’t fit nicely with the word ‘customer’ these days so I was dreading trying to get my point over to someone who didn’t really give a damn or worse was Indian and thought that they spoke English obviously my first language is ‘Cat’ and my second language English but in my experience Indian customer service people’s English is closer to Cat than the sort of English I and the rest of the English speaking world get by on. Not only that I have found that I get these poor souls very confused but that is just in my nature I suppose.

So imagine my surprise when I spoke to Apple customer service and the young man from Newcastle was very understanding (no wonder Apple is so successful if this is a taste of what they are like these days).

The Apple customer service chap and I discussed all of the options open to someone who can’t hear themselves think above the noise of a defective hard drive, all of which this desperately intelligent Cat (in this case I was ‘desperate’ and ‘intelligent’) had tried before I decided that I had to throw in the towel. Then the Apple customer service chap listened to the drive when I put the phone on speakerphone just to demonstrate what I had put up with all afternoon and wasn’t prepared to put up with for the life of the computer.

“That isn’t right!”He suggested helpfully!

“I thought that.” I replied.

There was one trick up his sleeve (I have always thought that you humans are lucky to have sleeves and tricks up them) he suggested an SMC start, you do this by shutting down the computer and waiting ten seconds. You have to disconnect everything except the power supply and so that makes ten seconds fly by frankly. Then you simply have to press and hold the power button for five seconds as you start the computer. For all trainee computer nerds reading this SMC stands for ‘System Management Controller’ and is the process that controls the fans, heat sensors and indeed start up and sometimes helps to make loud hard drives shut up a bit.

After we play the trick from his sleeve the nice Apple customer services man gave up and said that the Mini Mac should be replace obviously the hard drive was fitted so badly by the Chinese, as they raced to get another unit off the production line and out into the world and grab even more dollars, that it was never going to work properly.

I have said this before it is such a shame and a terrible waste of time, effort and the environment that we have what seems to be ‘everything’ knocked up badly in China and then shipped to us in the west, we have to stop it and so I am afraid to say that we have to stop buying lovely new Kitchen appliances, Indian rugs (made in China tee hee), furniture, Macs, iPhones, other computers and just about everything else before we forget how to make things in the west.

Of course you could say that I would say that because I have just arranged to have my new Mac Mini replaced – I did mention I was a clever Cat though didn’t I? Tee hee!

So on to today’s picture! Well it had to be a Mini Mac didn’t it? And I thought as it was getting ever closer to Christmas and pocket book raiding time I would add a picture of a nice Mini Mac with a picture of the cover of my wonderful book which is waiting in warehouses around the world to be shipped to you so that over Christmas instead of cooking for the children, being nice to your spouse and feeding the Dog you can lock yourself away somewhere cosy and read what has been called a masterpiece of feline literature and not only by me, though of course I may have started the rumour!

Your can, of course, buy my book from any book shop anywhere in the world but here are some alternative suggestions at Amazon.com and as regular readers of my blog will tell you – possibly with a sigh you can of course always get a signed copy of my marvellous book from my www.thecatsdiary.com.

and so much more – and most of what is there you don’t have to pay for which is handy these days isn’t it?

Technorati Tags:
Amazon.com, China, Getting Out Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary, Mac Mini, My book, My Website, Enirvonment, Newcastle