Yesterday, I called Double Click, my friendly local repair place, and I said, "Um, what's the deal with my MacBook? Where is it?" The guy said, "Oh. I just left you a message: it's here!" I was hoping that would be the case. I left my phone at home, so I got to spend much of the day fantasizing about what kind of awesome voicemails I would have: I'd have won the lottery, my laptop would be in. Heck, maybe just my brother would be visiting. Anything!
So I updated my backup from the loaner I had (which took about half an hour), zeroed out the hard drive (which tok about an hour), and took it over to Double Click. There was some confusion about my order status, as it was mis-entered in the system (or something), but this was quickly sorted out. I checked that I still had 2GB of RAM and that was that. We headed home.
Once home, I rebooted to my backup drive and started the restore running. An hour later, I rebooted to my laptop, just as I remembered it, and plugged in my 21" LCD... and watched it display some totally, horribly distorted image.
I did what I could, but nothing helped. I called them up, told them I'd be in, and waited for MJ to finish lunch. We packed her back into the car, drove over, and demonstrated the problem to the guys at Double Click, who all gathered around to see knight's messed up display. I checked it back in for re-repair and drove off with the same old familiar loaner. I wasn't so much angry as just annoyed: Double Click is about five miles away, and because I still don't drive it meant inconveniencing Gloria, and boring Martha.
On the up side, I got us a hoagie and a cheesesteak on the way back, and they were good.
On the even upper side, Double Click then called and said that Apple thinks it will be cheaper for them to just replace my entire unit -- and I got the impression that it will be with a new MacBook. That is, a Core 2 Duo. We'll see!
Anyway, I'm re-restoring back backup onto the loaner. Soon: back to almost normal.
