#22, Sleepy Evening Again

Early Evening, Princeton-By-The-Sea, California, November ‘07, artistic view.

More rain, more sleepy weather again. It is raining on and off again, and the weather makes you very lethargic. Spent some time in front of a computer during the day watching YouTube videos, commenting on some, rating, and deleting everything else that I do not want to watch. I have been getting many videos like that recently. Some people send two, three, four, and even in one case, five identical emails with attached videos. Why do they do that? It only makes me mad, and I will not watch for sure if somebody is trying to force me!
Have you noticed that the number of mean and arrogant comments is way down on YouTube? Not sure if it is just me, since I did clean my account and many people got dropped, but things are overall much cleaner. Probably the initial, tumultuous stage belongs to the past and things are going to be more pleasant from now on. Let's hope so. Or, maybe I am just dreaming, the weather is indeed good for that.
Just a single case opposite to what I just told you. Someone called me a ****head after I pointed out to a girl singing Wuthering Heights that the song was originally sung by Kate Bush! I can handle that, I guess.
Nikkei is down 4% in Tokyo, let's see what NYSE does in NY in a few hours. Apple is down to 130 from 200 high not long time ago, a very major correction. Lots of house foreclosures in the San Francisco Bay Area, house prices are going down as well.
A quick trip to a bookstore to check if there are any new titles, also checking latest travel and photo magazines, kind of ritual.
Later in the evening, chicken and spinach crepes and coffee at IHOP http://www.ihop.com. Gas for my car, violin favorites CD playing inside. We can call it a day once I submit this blog, and finish a cup of green tea.

#17, iMac is Dying

Ukulele - Give Me The One Elvis Played - It's Now Or Never..., Honolulu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Yes, it is true. My 24 inch iMac is really dying. Bought brand new, worked well with no issues for about seven months, then things started to go South. As far as I know, problems are related to overheating, since it is very sensitive to room temperature, the cooler the better. The screen displays short horizontal lines and then the message tells you to reboot. When you reboot, in any of the several ways as suggested in the Apple manual, the screen looks identical, no help. Resetting SMC, again according to the same manual, used to bring it to life for several hours or several days, and then the same lines. Now resetting no longer helps. Need to figure out how to get all data of the hard drive. When those problems started, the internal fan had to be on all the time to keep it alive. Obviously it made using the internal iSight camera and microphone impossible because of the fan noise. Without the fan, the microphone would record the hard drive noises, this was also annoying after a while. I believe many other people on YouTube are quite familiar with that annoying sound destroying videos.
My previous, large desktop Mac, developed identical problems after about a year of use. iPod lasted less than a year, as well.
Paid over $2000 for the iMac, lasted only seven months, it sounds rather expensive. Amazing that PCs I use quite often never have the same problem, and cost less than half! I guess the more expensive, the worse it gets!