Well, I can’t very well title this “Trial by fire”, because I think I titled a blahg post that last week. Or did I just dream that?

I thought I would be saving myself a bunch of hassle by paying for someone at the Apple store to transfer all of the junk on my creaky old, taped-together MacBook to my shiny new MacBook Pro. After four or five phone calls from the tech folks over there, I have been reduced to a simpering mass of protoplasm. At least I think it’s protoplasm. Not really sure I know what protoplasm is.

First of all, as I have said before, I do not get along with telephones very well. I use my iPhone for just about everything BUT a phone. I don’t know exactly where it all went south. When I was a beach urchin, I used to call my grandparents or my dad at the bank or my friend Laurie without any problem. Maybe it was when I was a terribly insecure teenager waiting for my not-very-good boyfriend to call me when he promised me he would.

Anyway, nowadays the sound of my phone ringing (or vibrating, as it does when I’m at work) feels like about a billion volts of lucky-shucky shooting through my body. Caller ID helps minimally but even with that… Who is it? What do they want? How will I string the words together to talk?

These calls were from a “blocked” number. I knew it was the Apple Store. What was the problem? It was passwords. Of course. What is your password for the new computer? What is your password for the old computer? Well, I thought I knew my passwords. Guess what? They didn’t work!!!

I was feeling a little frantic, pacing around the lunch room talking to this person, not really wanting to actually, uh, tell her my passwords, right out loud. I mean, we are *conditioned* to not give out that kind of information over the phone! And I was at work, where the Long Suffering, Cat Herding Person (or anyone) could overhear me! Not that the LSCHP would have any interest whatsoever in hacking into my personal computer. Because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Oh, it’s KW. I don’t even want to know [eye-roll].

On top of that, she kept confusing me by telling me that she thought they could do the transfer without the blasted password(s). “Fine! Do it!” I said. And then she would call me again! “What’s your password for the new laptop?” “What’s your password for the old laptop?” I was terrified that she would ask me about the password for one of the Apple II+ computers in the Landfill Dungeon. I DON’T KNOW!!!!! I have given you every password I can think of — OVER THE PHONE — and you keep telling me they don’t work and… I DON’T KNOW!!!

I finally asked her (I was VERY nice and even laughed) if we should just cancel the whole transfer and I would do it myself. Because I *can* do that. I just know from experience that it is a big pain in the you-know-what. And one that I do not have time for.

After we hung up the last time, I took a walk. And then I tried to call her back. Because the GG had remembered an old password that I used to use but have long forgotten about. That was (probably) it! I couldn’t call her directly because (hello!) the number was blocked. I called the Apple Store. Doodly-doodly-doodly-do, you are the next person in line. Well, okay. I was the next person in line for 10 minutes. I gave up. I have not heard back. I hope my file transfer is progressing.

This experience left me feeling as though I was a complete idiot. Speak s-l-o-w-l-y, I’m blonde! And guess what? I get to do it all over again later this week when my new work laptop arrives. And I get to do it myself that time. As you might guess, the on-line banking industry does not use Apple computers (although many of its employees have them at home).

File this under first-world problems, please.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2011 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.