Saturday, August 23, 2008

my apple battery woes

a couple weeks ago, i downloaded a widget for all kinds of cool stats on my mac (i think it's called istat). at first, the battery stats showed something like 90% functioning. over after a few days, i looked again and strangely it has changed to 50-ish%. i thought i have been working too hard on my 50-page paper and have turned delusional. but that same horrible number showed up a few days in a row and then stayed.

it was then that i realized that my battery capability has gone down the drain dramatically. this thing is only barley 1 year old. if i don't plug it in, i can only use the laptop for about 1 hour. it gets used up pretty fast and scary.

thankfully, i had purchased this laptop with a three-year extended warranty. but that was from sg. i wasn't sure if the NTU offer applies internationally (because when i read the paper works from the time of purchase, it's not very clear). i was running through my brain of what other possibilities i might explore if apple doesn't recognize the warranty here. i thought maybe i will have to mail it back to singapore and get somebody to exchange it for me... or wait until i go back to singapore to visit... or just live with a faulty battery.

so i made an appointment with the "genius" at the apple store genius bar. it seems that they are pretty busy. to make things worse, i got out of the house later than i wanted to. not sure about parking, i grabbed a pretty good parking space that was free (since this is in the pasadena area... i knew parking is hard or expensive or both). i was walking on the street in the wrong directions. called my mom to get some help but she was getting pretty confused too. anyway... i found it at the end (but walked for a good 10-15 min). thankfully, since i had an appointment, the "genius" helped me. he gave me the initial talk that batteries do not last forever. they diminish their capabilities after many usages... blah blah blah. dude. i researched the web before i came. (i think he was just buying time). to cut the long story short, without any more questions, he got a new battery. did the paperwork. and put in the new battery.

moral of the story: make sure you buy the extended 3 year apple care. or else you might be like me... just a few days or months after the 1 year warranty wears out, you might find your computer destroyed (my poor ibook).

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

my first croc

been looking for comfortable sandals to walk with. actually shopped in san diego and san jose area and didn't find anything that is both good quality and priced.

last week i got an ad in the email that there's free shipping from endless. since i've been looking on amazon to find suitable crocs, i thought the price was pretty good and bought it.

got it yesterday and surprisingly it is so lightweight. according to the website, it's some kind of special material that also prevents bacterial growth. will try it out and see how good it really is...