God hates my Macbook.

Hoo, boy, I've had some delightful dealings with technology people in these past few weeks. Between trying to get Rogers to upgrade my phone (that's another epic for another day) and the exploits of today, it seems that most customer service people have become so jaded and spiteful that they really just don't care anymore. But right now I'm here to complain mostly about my Macbook, and how it's becoming abundantly clear that God, the ultimate in customer service reps, really just has it in for my poor machine. Maybe I'm courting disaster by having the Flying Spaghetti Monster decal on the back, maybe I just got a lemon, but seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Here, in chronological order, is the story of my Macbook.

- August 20, 2007: Happy Mia brings home her very own laptop, just in time for her move out to Victoria. My father, tech fiend that he is, recommends the Applecare extended warrenty, and nags me until I set it up. I will later thank him many times over. The first part of this year is filled with joy and happy.

- December 2007: While home for the holidays, I upgrade to Leopard.

- January 2008: My first hard drive failure. I am understandably distraught, but the guys at the UVic computer store are able to retrieve all information. In thanks, I make them brownies. The top case (where the keyboard, mouse, etc are) is cracking. I am charged $50 for the labour required to get my stuff back.

- November 13, 2008: The mouse button has completely ceased to function, and the case has cracked even further. A replacement of the case solves all of these problems, thankfully, giving me back the ability to click on things without using the trackpad. Covered by Applecare.

- November 19, 2008: I'm back in the shop again, to report that my battery has lost so much power that it will die without warning within an hour. It is just over the 300 charge cycles that is the maximum point in the warrenty, thus necessitating that I buy a new battery at full cost. I also upgrade my RAM from 1GB to 4GB. Total cost: $303. 52

- February 2009: My second hard drive failure, again for absolutely no discernible reason. I am lucky twice and the guys get my data back. $50 for labour, no charge for the new hard drive. The plastic border around my screen is also cracking, and that is repaired as well. It is also at this point when my dad gives me THE MONOLITH, one of my two faithful external hard drives, with the caution "it might fail if it's left on too long, but here ya go." Having learned my lesson, I now back up fairly regularly.

- March 2009: I buy my second faithful external hard drive, a 500GB MyBook. At this point, I do several different kinds of backups to several different kinds of drives (I have USB sticks stashed in strategic corners of my room that hold copies of my Documents folder). My Macbook has warped me into a twisted, superstitious creature. I will not leave my laptop on a soft surface, I schedule it to shut down each night, and have installed hard drive status checkers, web site checkers, and ad blockers, and I have combed through the hard drive trying to make more room on it. I know it's illogical, but I figure that the thing won't die if it has some extra GBs to breathe with. If the computer does crash and I am forced to reboot it, I will not look at it for several minutes. In fact, I will leave the room and let it load, because I know that if I look at it funny it'll fail on me just to be a bitch.

- April 2009: I start to notice that my power adapter is not charging as well as it used to, but I am in the middle of exams and cannot afford to send it away to Apple to be looked at.

- July 2009: It is firmly established that one of the pins in my power adapter has come loose, severely weakening the connection it can make with the machine. I figure out various ways to keep it on its feet because I have no time to send away for a new one, which would necessitate the old one being taken from me first. Furthermore, the battery (which is only 8 months old) begins to show signs of dying as it receives weaker and weaker signals from the power cord, until it will only run for about an hour on its own.

- August 2009: I make not one, but TWO attempts to go to TWO different Apple stores in an effort to get these parts exchanged. The Geniuses at both stores cannot be bothered to have available appointments.

- Monday: I sit on the phone with Applecare for a full hour, talking to three different, very nice people, about this problem. The second one assures me that she will send me a new power adapter and I can even keep the old one. I am then transferred to a Brooklynese guy named Johnathan, to whom I tell all my woes about this computer in an effort to maybe make a case for getting a new machine. He assures me that he will send me a new power cord (!) and a new battery, and all I have to do is send the old ones back. Fedex will deliver them in a minimum of four business days.

- Yesterday: While washing the dishes, I miss Fedex by two minutes.

- Today: While sneezing, I miss Fedex's ring of the doorbell AGAIN. After sitting on the phone with them, no sooner do I hang up when there is a passive-aggressive delivery woman at the door with three packages. Maybe the third one has the shipping boxes, I figure, but no, they've sent me two power adapters, as well as a battery. If I can, I plan to keep the second one, for the inevitable day when something else goes wrong. Oh, yeah, and the top case has cracked again.

Seriously, I think God hates my computer. This thing is exactly two years and one week old; I know because I checked all of this out in an attempt to make a case to Apple. I like their products, but seriously, it's like a circus machine.