A MacNightmare

So here is the reason I haven't been on line much lately. I have been wrestling with my recent conversion to a MacBook which my darling Other Half gave me for my birthday. I took possession of it on April 24th and I have been caught in its shiny, new clutches ever since. That is until May 3rd, a mere nine days later when Number One Son and I were hard at work on a Social Studies project. Actually we were spiralling downward in a fight over when he should have started the project, when it was due (they all got an extension) and how, in the future, he needed to better manage his time, but that isn't what this post is about.

We finally found a cool template to use for his newsletter about John Cabot's voyages to find the Northwest Passage and had begun pasting photos and had written about one and half pages of text when we tried saving it. Now, of course we had been saving all along but suddenly this appeared -

Unable to save document due to invalid argument

Huh ... I thought our argument had been quite valid but really that was none of the Mac's business. Hit Command S again. Same message. Tried to do it the long way. Nothing. Tried to print what we had done so far and then the pinwheel thingy started spinning. Stopped everything and got on the phone with Apple Support. Went through two advisors until finally they had me shut it down manually and turn it back on.

"What do you see?" the advisor asked me in a comforting southern accent.

"I see a white light ... and a big question mark." I replied.

"Oh. Let's try that again," he says. I do. Same white light and question mark.

"What does it mean?" I innocently ask.

"Umm ... well ... it means it can't find your hard drive," says the nice advisor very calmly.

"But it's right here, in the computer, isn't it?" I say, trying to conceal the panic in my voice from my thus far oblivious son sitting next to me.

"Well, umm ... I haven't seen this happen before for these reasons. You'd be best to take it back to where you bought it and see if they can recover anything."

"Recover anything? You mean it's gone? My nine day old, barely broken in MacBook is dead?"

By this time my son is making a soft moaning sound which is getting louder by the second and I am barely holding back the tears. Tears for the social studies project and the production schedule I spent all day working on for our business, tears for the time it was going to take driving to the Best Buy two hours away, tears for all my Mac hopes and dreams, not to mention the sales job it took to convince my Other Half that switching to a Mac wouldn't cause any inconvenience to him or the business.

The advisor sheepishly continued with his script, "Well, thank you for calling Apple support, is there anything else I can help you with today?"

Oh, where to begin ...