Teetering on the brink
I was all ready for a spectacular hard drive crash, and then tonight something unexpected happened: my PowerBook’s AC adapter stopped working. Without a way to recharge the battery, my precious PowerBook was on its way to becoming a 5-pound paperweight.
After a brief panic which involved backing up my most important files (onto my iPod mini), I searched the Apple support pages with my last few minutes of battery power. As it turns out, this is a common problem with Apple’s power supplies: a loose connection develops where the DC cord meets the power brick.
And no, it seems a replacement AC adapter won’t be covered under my $300 extended warranty. Apparently any problems of this sort are inevitably due to “improper use”. Apple kindly mentions this policy twice in their troubleshooting document.
It’s hard to believe this machine is already on it’s last legs–with the dying hard drive and now the AC problems–after only a year and a half. Tomorrow I’m off to the Apple Store to get some answers. Wish me luck!
on December 26, 2005 on 7:40 am
Improper use.. 0_o
Good luck.. at least you can return with your laptop fully charged.
on December 28, 2005 on 5:38 am
Hey…could you do me a favor and change your RSS feed to show the entire post and not just an excerpt? ι Όγγγ
Unless you’re doing it on purpose, in which case you should explain yourself.
on December 28, 2005 on 9:56 am
Um, your RSS feed is also showing only excerpts. Just saying.
I originally had the full article, but then I noticed WordPress completely mangles them by removing all the HTML markup. So a top-ten list would get mashed into a giant sentence, and hyperlinks wouldn’t show up.
I’m slightly in favor of the nicely formatted excerpt as opposed to the mangled and occasionally unreadable full post. But I can switch if it really bothers you. After all, you’re probably the only person reading my RSS feed.
on December 28, 2005 on 11:16 am
Dude, I’m seeing the full posts on my feed. Are you using the Atom feed or the RSS 2.0 feed? The feed URL I use is http://blogs.ravasthi.name/tepumpkin/feed. I’m using the similar one for your feed, and seeing excerpts. Also I see bulleted lists just fine in my RSS feed. What gives?
on December 28, 2005 on 11:46 am
OK, apparently I was subscribing to the RSS feed instead of the Atom one. I must have clicked the giant “RSS” button at the bottom of my template. Subscribing to the Atom feed instead seems to fix my problems.
I wish I could edit these templates. The RSS feed is obviously broken.
So for future reference: when subscribing to a WordPress blog, click the “Atom” link.
on December 28, 2005 on 11:58 am
Now I remember why I was using the RSS feed: the WordPress Atom feed doesn’t validate.
on December 31, 2005 on 11:30 am
hey i read your RSS feed too.
i’ve been seeing just excerpts, too, so I clicked the “Atom” link. now it looks fine to me.
on January 2, 2006 on 3:38 pm
I had the exact same problem with my non-Apple power supply. It was for my gateway laptop that was available for purchase for what must have been 1 week. I got a very slim version of the laptop they now sell. When Arvind went to see if he could pick up the same model a few days after I got mine, they no longer sold that model . . . As you can imagine, a few years later when my power cord completely detached from the brick from similar improper use, Gateway had no clue what the hell I was talking about. They practically have no record of that laptop model/associated accessories at all. After hours of trolling, I finally found the exact same AC adaptor I had from a place called pc-partners.com for the very reasonable price of $25. Disaster averted.
on January 2, 2006 on 4:13 pm
@Prachee: I got lucky–Apple was nice enough to replace my power supply under the extended warranty. The replacement seems to be a newer model with better build quality and more stress protection at the point where my previous supply had failed.
I’m definitely going to be more careful with my power supply this time. These things always seem to break down at the worst possible moment!