Pot Heads, Geeks, iCloud, Ravenous Pigs and Silver Linings

It seems like the last several weeks of my life have been all about recognizing the silver lining in any situation.  So I shouldn't be surprised that a cloud saved my bacon ... an iCloud, that is. 


One week ago today, my lemon of a Dell laptop decided to flip me an electronic bird and die.  You can read about the sad, sad demise here.  I hauled off to Best Buy to see the loveable geeks at Geek Squad.  I arrived right after the store opened and yet I was seventh in line!  I had left my iPhone in the car, so I had nothing to do other than stare at the guy in front of me like I was checking him for melanoma!


I have to take a moment to applaud the staff at Geek Squad for keeping their cool and delivering great Customer Service.  The people in the line were ruthlessly mean and equally clueless about their computers.  If I was a Geek Squad rep, I would have told at least one of the people to go download themselves and then make sure to back up HARD. 


But no, these slightly nerdy and slightly hip gentlemen were so cool and even-tempered, I wanted to administer a urine test to see what drugs they must be taking.  And then I wanted a huge wheelbarrow full of those drugs.  ("Lily with Rage Disorder"!)


The Elderly Woman next to me leaned over and shout-whispered "WHY DO ALL THESE GEEK SQUAD GUYS LOOK LIKE POT HEADS?"  As I was still holding on to hope that the Geek Squad could save my lemon of a laptop, I just smiled nervously and turned away.


Here is a sample of the scintillating conversation I was privileged to overhear in the Geek Squad line:


Geek Squad Guy (who looked like Howard Wallowitz from CBS' The Big Bang Theory):    Hello, what seems to be wrong with your laptop?


Elderly Woman:  The keyboard is all sticky.


Geek Squad Guy:  Did you spill anything on it?


Elderly Woman:  (with buckets of indignation)  Oh noooooo!  I did not spill anything on it!


Geek Squad Guy:  (in a soft, patient tone)  Is it possible that anyone else in your household spilled something on the keyboard?


Elderly Woman:  Well yeah probably.  I have grandchildren.


I wanted to send the Geek Squad Guy to law school right then and there.  Most people would have just stopped when the woman vehemently protested that she did not spill anything on the laptop.  But noooo, the Geek Squad guy knew there was more to the matter at hand.  I wonder if she had said "no" to his 2nd question, would he have asked: "Is it possible that someone broke into your home and spilled something on the keyboard?"  Or: "Is it possible that the ghost of your dead husband somehow returned to human form and spilled something on your keyboard?" 


The crafty Geek Squad Guy then spent about fifteen minutes explaining to the woman in about 8 billion ways, that spilling something on the keyboard is not covered by the warranty.  I am not sure why the woman kept asking "But why?" since she already admitted that the warranty expired 2 years prior.  I really wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her.  However since I don't want to add "elder abuse" to my record, I desperately tried to go to "my happy place" in my head.  In my happy place, elderly women don't bark "BUT WHY?  BUT WHY?" 


Geek Squad guy, I salute you.  Superb customer service, patience and overwhelming, undeserved kindness in the face of stupidity- all given while an elderly woman is declaring the whole lot of you as a bunch of pot heads! 


When it finally was my turn in line (I believe it was 37 years after I first entered the line), I also received extremely good customer service.  I have to thank the Geek Squad Guy who looked at me with kind eyes and said "Ma'am, it's official - Alex checked out your hard drive ... it's dead.  There's nothing more we can do unless you want to pay a lot of money.  And really Ma'am, maybe it's just time to count your losses and move on."  It was just the inspirational speech I needed to stop from throwing myself on the dead laptop screaming "WHY GOD, WHY???"  Geek Squad Guy had somehow teleported me past Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression and now here I was straight on the nose at Acceptance.  Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would have been stunned. 


The Geek Squad guys checked out my laptop for free.  Gave me a sensitive, gentle let down for free.  And gave me the subject of a future blog post ... for free.  Thank you, Geek Squad!


I would like to alert all future boyfriends that when you're ready to dump my sweet ass, please hire a guy from Geek Squad to do it.  I'll feel better and you'll be spared some slashed tires.  (Oh, I kid!  Maybe ...)


Another tidbit from my time with the Geek Squad, the gentleman who checked out my hard drive is absolutely, 100% the future incarnation of a present day certain eight year old Lego-loving boy who lives right here in Tampa Bay.  So evidently, the Geek Squad also took me 12 years into the future ... for free.  Silver linings abound! 


I think the Geek Squad must practice Zen Buddhism or Jedi mind control because after waiting in a tremendously slow line and then being told my laptop's hard drive was fried, I still felt pretty good about the world and my place in it.  I decided to take inventory of what the loss of the hard drive would truly mean to me.


I knew I had lost some pictures for upcoming blog posts (Lily and KRG having an amazing dinner at the American Gastropub Ravenous Pig in Orlando!  Argh!  Goodbye sweet, sweet pictures!).  I also knew I had lost a bunch of iTunes purchases.  You know how in science experiments, hamsters learn how to press a button to get a feed pellet and then press that button like they are morse code operators?  (Yeah kids, pick up your iPad 2s and look up "morse code.")  On iTunes, I am that hamster.  I push that damn "Buy" button like it's dispensing crack instead of new music.  (Not that I'm a crack addict ... ohhhh noooo!) 


Given my ridiculously slow schedule of backing up my laptop, I figured I had lost a couple hundred rockin' iTunes songs.  Which would cost me a couple hundred dollars to replace.  I threw that fact in the denial bucket and instead concentrated on how lucky I was that I actually had the resources (especially before the holidays!) to purchase a new laptop.  (Oh no, I was not going to just buy a new hard drive - that lemon laptop was just waiting to destroy more things for me!  Curses on you, Lemon Dell!) 


Based on my step-father's and my friend DEG's recommendations, I ordered a Mac Airbook.  I was over the moon ecstatic that my new laptop was scheduled to arrive on Friday, November 25th.  I would have the entire weekend to play with my new toy!  Hooray!


Then on Friday, I get an email ... my shipment has been delayed.  (Which I think is funny because when I went to the UPS website, it shows that my shipment was always scheduled for Monday, November 28.  No delay!)  Could Apple be lying to me?  Ohhhhh Apple ... and to think I read that 8000 page biography on Steve Jobs ... even when I thought I could read no further, I managed to PRESS ON! 


But the silver lining would not be deterred.  I was jumping up and down and doing the "Happy Snoopy Dance" when I found out about Apple's iCloud.  (And yes, that IS a link to Snoopy dancing, CLICK IT!  CLICK IT!)


Thanks to Apple's new "iCloud" - I could re-download all my past purchases on iTunes.  (Now I'll ignore the fact that I think this should have been an option all along and instead cheer that I did not lose all of my recent purchases.  Thank you Apple for instinctively knowing that I am a woman who rarely backs things up - even though you send me a message after every iTune purchase telling me to BACK UP MY PURCHASES.)


Now if my Mac Airbook would just get here, so I could begin restoring my iTunes collection!


Several hundreds of dollars saved.  A trip in a time machine 12 years into the future.  And a new laptop that hopefully will arrive by the end of today.  Silver lining, silver lining, silver lining ...