Magnetic Oil
August has been a full month for Midnight Oil. Partly that is because we have had three events on the books: a trip to suburban Boston for the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church; a Worship Boot Camp in Plano, Texas for church planters and new service starters from 26 states; and one of our Creative Worship-Design Matters events at a Presbyterian church in Chicago. All of this travel is highly unusual for August, not that we’re complaining.
But that is only half of the story. Usually, headed into a busy travel season I try to make sure that my part of our company affairs are in good working order. This time, however, I had to contend with a dead laptop for almost 3 weeks.
First my MacBook Pro battery started to bulge. Check out this guy’s trauma. Apparently this is a known issue that isn’t being acknowledged by Apple. The tech support guys from India were sure happy to replace it for me. They told me, until the replacement comes in the mail, take the old one out. The bulge can damage internal parts.
A few hours after my call to India I was trying to boot my laptop, and my 6-year old son walked up with a magnet in hand and placed it directly over the hard drive. The MacBook Pro stopped booting and went gray. I went gray. Being at my sister’s in Austin, I was helpless to solve it for a day, too. (My latest backup was three months old.)
After running tests on the hard drive for about a week, I gave up and bought a new, 500GB HD. After installing it, with really helpful instructions here, the MacBook Pro wouldn’t even turn on. Uh oh – maybe it was the battery after all. So I took it to an Apple Store. They shipped it to the bench in Houston, and voila, 10 days later I had a new logic board.
So to summarize: this month, a new logic board, a new hard drive, and a new battery.
We still aren’t caught up around here. The moral of the story is, Jesus not only saves, he backs up. And the other moral is, if you are overdue to receive a product you ordered with us this month, blame it on the magnet.
