Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Back to winter

Got one ride in this week before winter returned. There is a new blanket of snow on the ground, but it looks like it will warm back up soon. Hopefully before next week is over we will be back to riding up Slate Canyon. Here is Monday's ride.

It was the first time this year that I have ridden all the way up to the pipe hill. Unfortunately my rear tire slipped on a couple of hills so I didn't make the whole way non stop. Maybe next time.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Good-bye Apple

NOTE: I did finally get this taken care of. See comments.

I purchased a 20" iMac in the fall of 2005. The computer would turn off at random times without warning. At first it would only happen once a week or so, but it started happening more and more frequently until it finally got to where the computer would not stay on long enough to finish booting.

I took the computer into an Apple dealer and they determined that the power supply was bad and replaced it under warranty.

One year and 3 months later the computer has the same problem. Only this time it went from occasional power failures to continual power failures in a week. I looked on the web and found this:
http://www.apple.com/support/imac/powersupply/repairextension/

My computer has the EMC number 2056 as stated on their website. However when I called about the problem they said they would not replace the power supply because my serial number does not match their list of "affected" serial numbers.

It seems obvious to me, given that I have had two power supplies go bad in just over a years time period, and that my number matches the number that they state on their web site, and that my computer was for the correct time period that I am a recipient of their bad power supplies. But this didn't matter to their support or customer service people. I argued with them for a long time on the phone and while they admitted that they had problems with their power supplies, and that I had a bad power supply they insisted that mine could not possibly be due to the same problem because, according the their customer relations person, "if we found a problem we wouldn't send you a new power supply with the same problem". Obviously they did.

I have been an Apple customer since the early days. My first Apple was an Apple II+. I have purchased my share of Apple computers and iPods. I have had my company purchase many Apple computers for me and other employees. I have to say though that if this is how I am going to be treated when they have an obviously defective product that it is time for me to look elsewhere for my computers. So no more iTune purchases, no more iPod purchases, and no more Apple computer purchases.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

No cleats, no GPS

Finally got out mountain biking again. The trail was completely dry. It was sunny and warm, almost too warm. The problem is that it has been so long since I have been mountain biking that I was missing some essentials, shoes, and GPS. Fortunately I had an extra pair of biking shoes in my office, unfortunately they didn't have cleats in them.
cleatless clipless shoes
Biking with clipless pedals, and biking shoes without cleats is hard. My feet were slipping all over the place. Oh well, it was still a great ride, even if I couldn't do technical climbs and I didn't get a GPS record of the ride.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Morning Fog

Just as things were starting to dry out a bit, it rained last night. I guess it is better than snow because it drys up quicker. I keep hoping that the trail will have dried up enough to get some mountain biking in. Road biking is nice, and it helps keep you in shape, but it just not the same as mountain biking.
Morning fog
After the rain there was fog. This isn't the greatest picture but it is the best that I got this morning. There were some great scenes of fog over the valley, but all I had available for those was my little Olympus camera, which just didn't do a good job of capturing the image.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

A trip up hobble creek

We rode up hobble creek canyon today.
Hobble Creek
It is fun drafting downhill, but I think when I was pulling downhill it was more work than pulling uphill was. If motionbased would fix their view port then I would add it here, but it is a bit too much work to add the picture and make it work right and I am feeling lazy tonight. So here is a link to the ride

My Bicycle Store