Waldo Jaquith

Huh. I’ve ridden by that shop twice (on Rappahannock bike rides) this fall, and always wondered what it was like inside. Surprised to hear that SmallDog screwed up.

Posted by MB on 12 November 2006 @ 10am

Being Small Dog, though, I don’t doubt they’d have made it right if I needed them to.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 12 November 2006 @ 11am

teacherken tried to post this, but his IP was blocked from the WiFi hotspot he was at:

First, I affirm your use of Macs — this is being written on a G4 ibook, which is I think the 6th Mac my wife and I have owned – i actually still have a beige G3 desktop because I have a perfectly usable parallel port laser printer attached to it. I also have a G4 dekstop and my wife has an Ibook.

Second – I love Rappahannock, even beyond the Inn, to which we have been multiple times on important occasions, and at which we stayed once on a special trip. We came very close to moving there at one point, seriously considering buying a house from – you will not believe this – Richard Viguerie of rightwing direct mail fame.

There are a lot of creative types in the county, which might make it a logical place to deal with MACS.

Oh, and Woodville was the village closest to the residence of Gene McCarthy, who settled in the county when he left public life, and wrote an interesting book about life in the County.

We will probably never move there – Charlottesville would actually be far more likely. But you brought back fond memories over the past 2+ decades

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 12 November 2006 @ 11am

I have 2-3 ancient Macs that I have been trying to find time to work on – not that they will ever be as good as a G4 or iBook. I have always loved Macs but had gotten used to being pigeonholed into using PC’s in the work that I did. (Land Surveying) I did run a Mac network when I worked for the feds (BLM), primarily used by the artists and illustrators in the creation of the pamphlets used at various sites. (monuments, parks, etc.) At the time the network people refused to go along and I was asked to try to help them be on the same network everyone else was. The IT folks were not into Macs, and thought it was stupid and useless.

Go figure – the government wasn’t very progressive. What a shock!

Posted by Mark Brooks on 12 November 2006 @ 5pm

I’m curious, what was the deal with the RAM SmallDog sent you? I’m aware of the memory pairing thing, I mean the “sticking Power PC in an Intel machine” bit.

Posted by Will on 13 November 2006 @ 10pm

I ordered RAM for my Mac mini Intel, and they sent me RAM with an invoice identifying it as such. I stuck it in my brand-new never-booted Mini, it worked, all was well, though it wasn’t as fast as I’d expected. Last week, two months later, my system melted down. I took it in to BlueRidgeMac. They e-mailed me a day or two later to tell me that my biggest problem was that my system had PPC RAM in it, rather than Intel RAM. They swapped it out, accidentally mailed the RAM back to Small Dog’s supplier (with whom they’re working that out), and gave me a replacement 1GB stick and I bought another 1GB stick while I was at it.

I hope that explains it.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 13 November 2006 @ 11pm

Waldo- The Mac folks in Pentagon City informed that there’s a problem with certain brands of RAM (no, I don’t remember which, I believe it starts with an “E”), in that it “goes bad” after about a year, and that if you want RAM that will actually last, go with Samsung.

Of course, my poor iBook is currently god knows where, getting its logic board replaced, (turns out it was NOT the RAM on my machine that caused massive kernel panics), so I’d ask around before actually believing that.

A word of note to all the Mac users out there: Do not go to the Pentagon City Mac store. It took them THREE visits to figure out what was wrong, all three times they said, “Ok, it should be fine now,” and it wasn’t. One of the guys was very rude, condescending and arrogant (he accused me of lying about going to the Mac store earlier regrading the same problem), but I believe he has been fired. If you’re in Northern Virginia, the Clarendon Mac store is best.

Posted by Melissa on 15 November 2006 @ 11am

Sadly the experiences in any Apple store, just like the experience in any big-box store is directly related to the skill, knowledge, patience, and problem solving skills of the employee you luck into at the counter when you go.

The sad truth is that there are people who are good at solving problems and people who are not. There are people good at customer service, and people who are not. The stores in any chain generally do not have the management expertise to cull their employees for those factors, because anyone can have a good day or a bad day, and generally everyone is on best behavior for an interview for a job.

If you luck into the ace problem solver on the planet who also happens to be excellent at customer care, but you catch her on the day her cat and mother both passed away, you are probably out of luck.

What I am suggesting is be patient and persistent and you’ll help weak trouble shooters at a poorly managed store improved a little. I know it is not your job to, but a better run store will be better able to care for your machine in the future.

Posted by Scott Nolan on 16 November 2006 @ 8am

Scott- I totally get your point, but there is NO excuse to accuse me of lying about having computer problems, and then accuse me of lying about coming in earlier regarding the “problem,” and refusing to help until I provided a reciept for the RAM I had installed when I was there the first time.

Posted by Melissa on 16 November 2006 @ 11am