Tag Archives: iPod

On Geniuses

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Why I don’t Genius Bar hop and other comments regarding my recent hard disk problem.

One of my jobs as a blogger is to produce at least one blog entry a week. As you may have noticed if you follow this blog, it looks like I’ve been slacking off lately. Well, I just want to take a few moments to assert that looks may be deceiving.

Last week was a busy one for me. I finally got my computer back up and running after its second hard disk crash in a year. This crash was far more serious than the last and required the geniuses at the Apple Store to fix.

Now I know that lots of Mac pros laugh at the word “genius” when applied to the Apple Store’s tech support folks. And I do agree that it would be difficult to call any of them geniuses in the true sense of the word. (Think Einstein.) But if you were to compare their computer skills to the average Mac user’s, they could indeed be considered geniuses. They know a lot more about the current computer models than 95% of Mac users. Sadly, I fit into that 95% these days. I could tell you all kinds of things about fixing a Mac II cx or a PowerMac 7100/66 — and that’s because I used to teach a course about troubleshooting those computers running System 7. Nowadays, my troubleshooting capabilities are limited to what I need to know — like much of my other knowledge — and I don’t really need to know all the things the geniuses need to know to do their daily fix-it jobs.

So I’m not uncomfortable applying the word genius to many (but not all) of them. To me, some of them really are geniuses when it comes to diagnosing and fixing Mac problems.

I’ll also be the first to say that the capabilities of an Apple Store genius staff on any given day for any given store is hit or miss. It all depends on each staffer’s experience, knowledge, and interest in the topics he or she needs to know. I was at the Genius Bar in the Chandler, AZ store on Monday and the geniuses that day were pretty good. One of them was a super genius, the one who helped me was definitely above average, and the guy working the iPod slot was about average. (Let’s face it: it doesn’t take much skill to fix an iPod problem. Every iPod should come with a cheat sheet printed on back that explains how to reset it; that will resolve 95% of an iPod’s problems. The iPod guy probably resets a lot of iPods in a day. I’ve gotten so good at it that I can reset mine with one hand while flying my helicopter. Darn vibrations lock it up more often than I’d like to admit.)

I’ve had repeatedly bad luck at the Biltmore Apple Store in Phoenix, which is at least 30 miles closer to my house. The two times I tried to get assistance there, the lead Genius didn’t seem interested in looking deeply into my problem and didn’t seem to care whether it was resolved or not. On my fried motherboard problem, it seemed that she spent more time telling me how much it would cost to fix the problem than diagnosing what the problem was. This, coupled with her obvious lack of sympathy, made me doubt her diagnosis, so I had to go to another store (Chandler) to get a second opinion. I got a bad taste in my mouth (so to speak) from the experience. And that’s why I don’t go to the Biltmore store anymore.

Oddly enough, sympathy for my problem seems to be important to me. My main work computer or “production” machine (currently a Dual G5) is like a partner to me. It holds onto the projects I’m working on, it has the tools I need to get the job done as smoothly as possible. When it works right, we’re a team getting the job done. When it starts acting up, I get concerned. It’s not just a machine on the fritz. It’s a work partner feeling ill. What’s the problem? Can I fix it before it becomes critical? Is its motherboard about to go (again)? Or its hard disk? Will I lose data? Will I need to take it to the hospital (fix-it place) to get it working right again? How long will we be apart? And, of course, the selfish questions, like how long will I be unable to work?

The geniuses at the Chandler store are always sympathetic to my problem. They understand that my computer isn’t just a machine I use for e-mail and to surf the Web. They understand that its hard disk contains lots of important information — including books in progress — and the tools I need to get my work done. They understand that without my production computer, there’s very little real work I can do. And even though they don’t necessarily push any harder to complete a job for me than they do for anyone else, they make it seem as if my problem is one of the most important ones they’ll tackle that day. And they soothe me with reasonable reassurances that make it easier to face the 90-mile drive home and wait for their call.

This time around, the problem was a toasted hard disk. Personally, I believe it has something to do with my Firewire ports — it occurred while my iSight was plugged in and I was attempting to suck something off a portable Firewire hard drive. (My motherboard problem also manifested itself when working with multiple Firewire devices, including an iSight, so I’m very wary of using it these days.) They replaced the hard disk — which IS something I could have done myself if I really wanted to — and managed to get about 50% of the data off my old hard disk before it ceased to function at all. This cost me dearly, but the way I see it, I was paying for my own stupidity. If I’d had my entire Home folder backed up, recovery wouldn’t have been necessary at all and I could have saved the $150.

What hurts even more is that I’d written an article for Informit.com about backing up with Fetch before I had the problem and neglected to utilize my own instructions to protect myself.

The computer was done the next day and my husband, Mike, picked it up on his way home. It isn’t exactly on his way — he works about 15 miles north of there — but it was a lot more convenient for him than for me to make the 180-mile round trip drive. On Wednesday morning, I set about restoring the whole computer to it’s normal setup. I didn’t like the way the Apple folks had set up the machine — for some reason I was really bugged about my home folder being called maria (note the lowercase) rather than its usual mlanger (which I’ve used on all my computers for years). (Is that anal or what?) So I pulled off the recovered data, reformatted the hard disk, and spent the next two days installing software and updates. The updates were particularly painful now that I’m on the super-slow wireless Internet connection I whined about elsewhere in this blog. The 139 MB Mac OS X 10.4.8 combined updater took quite a while to suck off the Internet before I could install it.

Fortunately, I managed to pull e-mail messages, endo settings and contents, ecto contents, and some other stuff off my PowerBook. My iCal and Address book data was already set up to synchronize with .Mac, so getting all that data moved over was very easy. The only thing of real value that I lost was Chapter 6 of my Excel 2007 for Windows book, which I’d been working on for the second time. (The first revision went bad and I started from scratch. So today I look forward to starting my Chapter 6 revision for the third time. I knew it would be the book’s Chapter from Hell, but I couldn’t imagine how hellish it would be.)

By Friday, the computer was 90% back to its old self and I was working on it regularly instead of my laptop. So I was out of commission for two full weeks. I blame myself for that, too, letting the disk recovery software run as long as I did before finally bringing it to the geniuses.

Telephone Support for the Price of a Book?

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Not likely.

I was driving down to the Phoenix area yesterday — my first time driving down there in months. It was a beautiful day, sunny with temperatures in the 70s. I was driving my little Honda with the top down and my iPod, connected to the stereo, blasting some classic rock. I had a 30-mile drive ahead of me on Route 60 (Grand Avenue) to get to the nearest PetSmart (or is it PetCo?), where I planned to buy some tropical fish for my aquarium. Route 60 isn’t the most pleasant road to drive on, but it’s nothing to complain about in the stretch I was driving.

I was having a good time.

My cell phone rang. The only reason I heard it is because it’s on vibrate mode and my ears were not necessary. I hit the mute button on the stereo and answered the phone.

The woman on the other end was difficult to hear at 65 mph in a convertible, so I pulled over. After all, she could be a customer for Flying M Air and I needed to hear what she wanted and to give her my full attention.

The words started coming through: QuickBooks. Book. Non-profit. How do I print checks?

It took all my patience not to explode. Apparently, this woman thought that since I’d written a book about Quicken for Windows and another book about QuickBooks for Macintosh, I could help her figure out how to print checks from the non-profit version of QuickBooks for Windows, which I had never even used, let alone written about. I don’t know where she got my phone number — it’s no longer on this site because of calls like hers — and I don’t know where she got the idea that the author of a book about a software product would be her free, technical support hotline.

I set her straight, hung up, and got back on the road. I was fuming for a short while, but the music and wind and great weather soon soothed me.

Here’s what people don’t seem to understand:

  • A book’s content is determined, in part, by the book’s project editor and page count. So an author cannot include coverage of every single nuance of a software program. The least used features are left out to make sure there’s room for the most used features.
  • An author cannot write a book about a topic unless the publisher feels that there’s enough of a market for the book to sell. That’s probably why this person could not find a book covering the not-for-profit version of QuickBooks for Windows. It’s also why I did not update my QuickBooks for Macintosh book to cover QuickBooks 2007 or my Quicken for Macintosh book for any version after 2003 (I think).
  • An author receives, on average, less than $1 per book sold. I don’t know where anyone can get one-on-one, completely personalized technical support by telephone for $1. (Even the folks in India use a script.) My point: buying one of my books does not entitle the reader to interrupt my day by telephone to ask questions about the book’s content or topics not covered in the book at all.
  • An author certainly cannot be expected to provide support for another author’s book. True story: I once got a question in my old FAQ system from someone who told me he’d bought a book by [insert author name here] and was having trouble understanding it. Could I help him? He wasn’t joking. Neither was I when I told him to contact the author of that book, not me.

This might seem like a hard line to take, but I don’t think so. I do a lot to support my work and provide content above and beyond what’s between a book’s covers. The Book Support categories you see listed near the top of the navigation bar are just an example — each one provides additional articles somehow related to a specific book. My Q & A system is also set up to receive questions that I can answer in a place where all readers can benefit from them.

That should be enough.

A Helicopter Repair Story

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Including a happy ending.

On Tuesday, I flew out to Robson’s Mining World in Aguila, AZ. I was scheduled to appear there on Saturday for their anniversary celebration and I wanted to make sure my usual landing zone was in good shape.

It was a windy day and I was tossed around a bit on the 8-minute flight from Wickenburg (vs. a 30-minute drive). But the winds were calmer closer to the ground. I circled Robson’s once, then set down on what I thought was a spot closer to the road. Turned out, it was the same spot I’d occupied the year before. It just looked closer to the road from the air. The quartz rocks Mike and John had laid out in a line for me were still there. The idea was to land with the helicopter’s cockpit over the line. That would keep my tail rotor away from the bushes behind us. But since the bushes looked bigger than they had the year before, I positioned the helicopter a little bit closer to the road.

I cooled down the helicopter and shut down the engine. Then I went out to assess the landing zone on foot. I discovered that the quartz line was still quite workable for me. The bushes were farther back than I’d thought on landing. (I always estimate the helicopter’s tail longer than it really is.) So the landing zone was fine. No trimming would be required. That’s good because I don’t like the idea of cutting any desert vegetation unless absolutely necessary.

I put on my jacket — it was still quite cool at 9 AM — and walked through Robson’s front gates. The place looked deserted. I headed toward the restaurant, planning on having a piece of pie for breakfast. The door was locked but as I was starting to turn away, Rosa, who works in the restaurant, hurried out from the kitchen and opened the door. I settled down at a table and she talked me into having a real breakfast of bacon and eggs. She set me up with a small pot of hot tea and went back into the kitchen to prepare my food.

I had a few awkward moments when the teapot’s lid fell into my cup and became stuck there. If I’d been with someone, we would have been laughing hard. But I was alone and laughed at myself more quietly. I had to pour all the tea back into the pot and wait for the lid in the cup to cool and contract a tiny bit before I could get it out.

Rosa brought me a plate of fresh fruit — grapefruit, pineapple, grapes, and oranges — then disappeared back into the kitchen. I busied myself by reading the history of Robson’s and some information about the equipment and vehicles on display. When she brought out my breakfast a while later, I gobbled down the two eggs over medium, three slices of bacon, and two slices of wheat toast with real butter. (Don’t you hate when restaurants use mystery spread on toast?)

The person I was hoping to see there, Rebecca, wasn’t in yet. She lives in Wickenburg and drives out five days a week to manage the place. I saw her drive in just as I was starting the engine for the helicopter at about 9:45. Since the engine was already running and the blades were already turning, I didn’t shut down. I had another stop to make.
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CDs vs. Downloads

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I couldn’t have said it better myself.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the inconvenience of downloading music from iTunes. Yes, you read that right. I said inconvenience.

Sure, it’s great to download music immediately, when I want it, and pay only 99¢ per song. But what’s not so good is the restrictions on music use:

  • I must register every computer I want to play my purchased songs on and I only get 5 of them. That covers my desktop Mac, my PowerBook, my Mac test mule (for writing Mac books and articles), my Windows test mule for writing Windows books and articles), and my husband’s laptop. About a year ago I was faced with a not-so-unique problem: the motherboard on my dual G5 went bad and needed to be replaced — before I could unregister it from iTunes. I lost one of my computer registrations and had to do battle with Apple to get it back.
  • I can’t easily back up my purchased music. I need to go through some kind of procedure that I simply haven’t had time to explore. In fact there seem to be restrictions on how I copy the music, period.
  • Apparently, there is some loss of quality if I burn purchased music to a CD and then rip that music to a computer. I haven’t played around with this enough to have the full story, but I shouldn’t have to spend the time to figure out why my music quality should change. It shouldn’t change.

Fortunately, I have an iPod (or three) so the fact that iPods are the only MP3 players that can play iTunes purchased music isn’t a problem for me. But I understand that it’s a major gripe for other people.

I was going to write a blog entry about all this, but now I don’t have to. I just read a piece that expresses my feelings and frustrations on this matter better than I could. From Alpha Geek: CDs vs. Downloads on Lifehacker:

DRM, the chief source of all this grief, is the love child of Satan and Osama bin Laden. If I could pay 99 cents for an unprotected, unrestricted, 320Kbps MP3, I’d do it in a heartbeat–and it would be all over for CDs. Instead, online music stores treat us like thieving children, locking us into one bit rate, one file format, a limited number of CD burns, and other annoying handcuffs. Apple and Microsoft impose the worst kind of restriction: Songs purchased from iTunes and Zune Marketplace can be played only on iPods and Zunes, respectively.

And later:

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve rekindled my love affair with CDs. They let me do things, to borrow from Old Blue Eyes, my way. See you in hell, DRM.

Thanks, Rick Broida, for putting my thoughts into words. See you at the CD store.

Flying to Sedona (again)

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A helicopter flight that has become routine.

As I write this, 36% of the site visitors who have taken the time to vote in my Most Interesting Topics Poll (that’s 11 people so far; I’m hoping for continued growth in that vote count) have said that Flying is the most interesting topic on this site. So I decided to devote this morning’s blog session to a flying article.

(For those of you just tuning in for the first time, among the hats I wear is a commercial helicopter pilot hat. I operate a Single Pilot Part 135 helicopter tour and charter company out of Wickenburg, AZ — Flying M Air.)

I flew yesterday. I flew three passengers from Wickenburg to Sedona and back. The passengers were originally from Russia and now live in the U.K. They’re staying at the Flying E Ranch, one of Wickenburg’s remaining three guest ranches.

I can’t get excited about this flight. It was so routine. After all, by now I must have flown from Wickenburg to Sedona and back at least 50 times.

The only thing unusual about the flight yesterday was visibility. In Arizona, it’s clear and sunny almost every day. Not only can I usually see the Weaver Mountains about 15 miles to the north, but I can usually see them clearly — that means I can distinguish rocks and canyons and other features from 15 miles away. But yesterday was different. It was hazy, as if a thin gauze had been stretched across my eyes. As I drove to the airport at about 10:00, it was apparent why: there was moisture in the air. There was condensation on my Jeep and even a little frost down where the horses were munching their morning meal. Imagine that. Moisture.

My passengers arrived early, all bundled up for the 50°F temperatures we expected in Sedona. After giving them their preflight briefing and loading them on board, I started the helicopter and waited for it to warm up. A few minutes later, we were on our way, climbing to the northeast into hazy skies.

The air was smooth, the sights were the same as usual (except for the haze) and I pointed them out faithfully to my passengers. They didn’t talk much, which is always a danger with me. I wind up talking to fill the silence, telling them more about the area than I usually do. I had three passengers on board, so I had to make sure I pointed out things on both sides of the helicopter — normally, with just two on board, I put them on the same side of the helicopter so I only have to point out things on one side.

We crossed the Weaver Mountains not far from the hidden cabins I’d discovered years before. Then we followed the Hassayampa River up toward Prescott, crossing the Bradshaws. My passengers were thrilled by the sight of snow on the north side of the moutains. I was thrilled by the fact that the haze had cleared out and it was a nice, clear day up there.

As we got close to town, I reported in to the tower at Prescott Airport. I planned to follow Route 69 a bit and then head toward the pass atop Mingus Mountain. This would have me cutting as much as one mile into Prescott’s airspace. (I normally go around it so I don’t have to talk to the tower, but our heavy weight had our airspeed a bit slower than usual and I wanted to save a few minutes of time.) We were over Prescott Valley when the tower pointed out a Baron about 400 feet above us, crossing in front of us. I descended about 500 feet — I was high because of all the mountains I’d have to cross — to stay out of his way. Then the tower cut me loose and I climbed up and over Mingus Mountain, reaching my highest elevation of the flight: about 8,000 feet.

West SedonaFrom there, I started a 1,000 fpm descent to the northwest, descending past the former ghost town of Jerome. I told my passengers about the first time I’d been there nearly 20 years ago when only a handful of people lived there. Now it was a booming tourist town, with art galleries and restaurants in the old buildings perched along its hillside. I showed them the open pit mine, then continued northwest to the red rocks. We did a red rocks tour on the way into Sedona, avoiding the flight path of the helicopter tour operators there, and landed at the airport.

Uneventful.

Of course, I’d been so concerned with getting my credit card terminal to work at the airport that I’d forgotten to bring a book or my laptop so I’d have something to do while my passengers went on their Jeep tour. Duh. After the Jeep picked them up, I walked over to Sedona’s restaurant for lunch. (I don’t think I can recommend the Chicken Alfredo with Broccoli; too thick and starchy, although the chicken was cooked nicely.) Then back to the terminal to wait.

I wound up renting a car from the car rental guy there. $20 for up to 3 hours (I think). I didn’t even have it two hours. I drove down off Airport Mesa and hit the New Frontiers grocery store at the bottom of the hill. It has a magnificent selection of cheese and a very knowledgeable cheese guy behind the counter. I tasted some cheeses and wound up buying them all. I also bough brussels sprouts on the stalk — something that’s simply not available in Wickenburg.Then into “uptown” Sedona to visit a bookstore (the Worm) which seemed to have fewer books than I remember. And coffee at the coffee shop across the street. Then back to the airport so I’d be there when my passengers returned.

I talked to everyone who worked at the airport. The car rental guy, the AZ Adventures helicopter tour guys, the FBO guys, and the Maverick helicopter tour guy. That kept me busy even after my passengers returned from the Jeep tour and went to have lunch at the airport restaurant. By 3:30 PM, they were back and it was time to go.

The return trip was almost as routine. The haze had moved in a bit and we were flying right into the sun. My hat was under my seat, so I had to shade my eyes with my hand once in a while. Instead of heading straight for the southern end of Mingus Mountain, we headed southeast to Oak Creek Village. My front seat passenger had his camera out and the red rocks were being illuminated by that gently filtered afternoon sun. The views out that side of the helicopter were great. I flew just past Oak Creek VIllage before turning to the southwest, back into the sun. The mountains rose as dark shapes silhouetted against the hazy light.

I didn’t have as much to say on the way back. Part of that was my intercom system, which was creating static again. (I have to fix that! It’s driving me nuts!) So I had the squelch set so it was less likely to make noise. My passengers weren’t talking anyway. They were just looking; the daughter, who was probably close to 18 years old, had her iPod on under her headset and probably wouldn’t have heard what we were saying anyway.

The farther south we flew, the worse the haze got. It was definitely brownish in color toward the Phoenix area — smog trapped in an inversion. At one point, we could clearly see a dark line in the sky that marked the inversion layer. Very unusual.

I flew them over Crown King, a tiny town in the Bradshaw Mountains. The main reason I go that way on the way back is that you can normally see Wickenburg Airport from the Crown King area — a distance of about 23 nautical miles. But not yesterday. The haze was so complete that if I didn’t have my GPS set to Wickenburg (or at least a heading in mind) I would have strayed off course. I simply couldn’t see that far away. Even Lake Pleasant was difficult to see from the air, although I did point it out for my passengers as we flew about 10 miles north of its northern edge.

We were over the Monte Cristo mine on Constellation Road when I was still trying to figure out exactly where we were. When I saw the mine shaft and buildings, I thought I’d stumbled upon a mine I’d never seen before. Then I recognized it and was surprised that we were so close to town. Less than 10 miles to the airport, according to my GPS. I could just about make out reflections downtown and the scars of the earth around the airport.

I flew over town and then headed out to Flying E to show them the ranch where they were staying from the air. (That’s something I do for people staying in our local hotels and guest ranches.) Then we landed by the fuel pumps at the airport. I cooled down and shut down.

Routine.

After a while, flying the same route over and over does become routine or — dare I say it? — boring. Sedona is a place of incredible beauty and the best way to appreciate its beauty is to see it from the air. Yet when you’ve seen it as many times as I have, the impact of all that beauty fades. That’s one of the things I talked to the FBO guys in Sedona about. They both agreed that when they’d first come to Sedona, they were amazed at its beauty. Now, living with it all around them every day, it simply isn’t a big deal.

I felt like that when I flew at the Grand Canyon, too. Don’t get me wrong — it never got so boring that I’d prefer to fly elsewhere. I just wished I had the freedom to alter my flight path for a slightly different view or a new way of seeing things.

And here in Wickenburg. The upstairs front windows of my home look out over the Weaver Mountains in the distance. When I first moved into the house, I thought it was a view I’d never grow tired of. But I did. Kind of. I’m not sure why.

I’d be interested in hearing from other pilots who fly in beautiful places and have somehow lost sight of that beauty because of routine. Use the Comments link.