Tag Archives: Mac Mini

Not So Pretty Pictures From Space

Sssh! Don’t say anything and never you mind about my disguise, and yes, before you ask this false beard is ticklish but I’ll tell you this not half as annoying as the false eyelashes or the padded bra – ok I have got my disguise mixed up a little but what I have to tell you is important and I’ve only got a minute – they’re after me!

The shocking photograph which came into my possession recently was secretly given to me by a ‘source’ at NASA knowing that I would publish it and not worry about the consequences because I know you would like to see what the Chinese are doing right now – well ok at the beginning of last month! And frankly I am too famous to become the main course at a Beijing restaurant aren’t I?

“In early October 2010, a high-pressure weather system settled over eastern China, and air pollution began to build up for nearly a week – which means that instead of flying off and poisoning the rest of the world the Chinese got a does of their own ‘medicine.’

By the 9th of October, China’s National Environmental Monitoring Centre declared air quality ‘poor’ to ‘hazardous’ around Beijing and in 11 eastern provinces.”

Apparently visibility was reduced to 100m in some areas (not a long way in good old fashioned non-metric measurement), and at least 32 people died in traffic accidents caused by the poor visibility, many more suffered with asthma and other respiratory problems.

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on Nasa’s Aura satellite detected extremely high levels of aerosol particles (visible in the lower left of image so my contact said) and sulphur dioxide, from coal-fired power plants (lower right) on 8th of October. Apparently peak concentrations were six to eight times the norm for China, and 20 times the norm for the US.

Pollution-over-China-004.jpg

So as well as making very poor quality products like say oh Mac Mini’s for instance and annoying famous Feline authors the Chinese are doing their best to kill us all with air pollution, just when we in the west are making things a little better bit by bit.

Nice to see that the US of A is looking clean these days (although could do better is on the school report I believe) what a shame we have to put up with the Chinese filth, their badly made products and worst of all their bellicose attitude to the rest of the world.

As of today we in the know are still waiting for China to say sorry that they are a bunch of nasty polluters and do something about this and worse we are waiting for charities like Greenpeace and the WWF to at least say something about this disgraceful and dangerous behaviour or even go out on a limb and actually criticise countries like China and of course those arch polluters in India, but they don’t they, like western governments these days handle them with kid gloves and don’t annoy them by doing something simple like oh I don’t know – tell the truth for a change!

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My Mini Mac – The Saga Continues

Ok to be honest the story of my defective Mac Mini which was obviously thrown together by the Chinese with little or no regard for quality control is nearly at an end and won’t probably make it into the saga stakes. The retailer obviously read my blog and of course the not as funny emails of complaint that I sent them every hour or so and guess what – my new Mac Mini arrives shortly having been despatched from the UK yesterday – how about that for service? No bad eh!

Better still the computer won’t have a Czech language operating system so I will actually be able to use it and better still – almost – it was cheaper to buy the computer in the UK, mind you not as cheap as it would be if I bought exactly the same computer in the states – Apple operate on the old soviet style monetary exchange where one dollar exactly equals one pound – yeah right you commies as if!

So if what passes for quality control in China allows for my new Mac Mini to actually be used without the damn thing being defective upon arrival I will be writing my next blog from a different machine a sexy powerful little computer that like me has great looks and enormous style.

Book on Screen.png

As you can see the picture of the Mac Mini still has a picture of my wonderful book’s cover and you can still buy my book from any book shop anywhere in the world but here are some alternative suggestions at Amazon.com and again as my regular readers will tell you, you can 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?

Lastly not only is my birthday coming up but also someone who is nearly as famous – Jesus and as we know Christmas time is a time for gifts and extravagant acts of great kindness, yes and also Irish Republican Army attacks of shoppers in England, but we all know that the idea is to give a gift or three at Christmas and indeed birthdays my birthday is on November 17th and I would be delighted if you start to send me presents for that now and to save postage I don’t mind if you put my Christmas gift/s in the same parcel.

My readers, fans and even stalkers are all so very kind – oh one thing before I forget, if you were thinking of getting me a Mac Mini for my birthday or Christmas then it might be an idea to think of something else – I always think that cash is always a wonderful gift and and instantly shows the measure of your generosity! Just don’t forget to double the amount if you want to cover Christmas will you.

Mmmh! I do hope I don’t sound too much like a charity or church when telling my lovely huggable readers what I want for my birthday and Christmas but it is best I think to let you know what I want because I am a much more worthy cause than either of those.

Lastly well done to the Republicans I bet that they are thanking God that the American people have such sort memories – who go you guys into the mess that you are in with their lax banking laws and avoidable wars?

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Goodbye Broken Mac Mini – Hello New Mini Mac!

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!

Book on Screen.png

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?

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A Blog In A Hurry

Hi all – I am in a hurry because I am just about to spend several hours using a misnamed telephone ‘service.’

Yes that’s right – I will be calling the the very badly named ‘Apple Customer Service helpline’ the reason I have to do that is yesterday I received a new Apple computer and of course it doesn’t work properly. I have a history of buying Apple computers that don’t work properly. My laptop arrived several years ago and died almost immediately and because it was several years ago I had, until now, forgotten just what a prick you have to be to buy Apple computers because they go wrong straight out of the box every time and when you speak to customer service they can’t help.

Now I wouldn’t be talking to the Apple unhelpful line but the retailer who I bought the damn machine from allowed me, online, to fill in loads of forms – print out loads of forms and a postage label and then just as I was going out of the door with the box full to the brim with a useless computer they emailed me to say that I had to talk to Apple first they could help – yeah right!

So now I am about to sit in front of a phone listening to musak and Apple ads and get annoyed which means by the time I speak to the cretin called kevin or shona I will be in a foul mood in a way I pity don’t you?

I just have to keep repeating to myself – “I’m so lucky I could be saddled with a computer that runs Windows!” But as some cocky person has just said here at The Cat HQ “at least the Windows computer runs Windows.”

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