Column: The (sporadic) joy of tech

When the Apple logo on my husband's MacBook Pro turned into a Granny Smith, I suspected something was seriously wrong.

Unfortunately, I was right.

Once again, we were about to learn this lesson: When tech goes bad, it's not good.

Paul and I were in our living room, each on our laptop, when he exclaimed, “Something is happening to my screen!” He turned the computer toward me, and I saw that horizontal lines, of a greenish tint, had overtaken his display. This had happened totally without warning. In other words, one or two lines hadn’t appeared earlier in the day, then slowly worsened. It occurred all at once.

As I am the “techie” in the family, I instructed him to restart. We were both horrified when the apple came up green. “At least it’s not the death chimes,” Paul said, doubtfully, referring to a problem that plagued Apple in its early years. We had not heard those mournful tones in years.

In fact, we still had a sign-in screen, green as it was. But signing in got us nowhere.

I researched the problem on my own MacBook, and learned it was a “known issue.” That is tech talk for “some Apple users are getting green screens.” It was time to make an appointment at the Genius Bar.

This was Thursday morning. The earliest we could get a spot that worked for us at the Apple Store in the Maine Mall was midday Saturday. Paul faced at least 48 hours without his laptop. This could be trouble.

Paul is a retired journalist. He writes two blogs, one of which focuses on book reviews. Although he does not indulge in any game playing, he does enjoy Pinterest. So, he does use his laptop quite a bit. Paul also was worried about losing information stored on his MacBook, including our genealogical database, his address book and his calendar. Could this data be saved?

I thought it could, as my Google gleanings indicated it was a problem with the display, not the hard drive. But we had a more serious issue to deal with first. Paul kept a list of his passwords on his laptop—and nowhere else. Passwords he had not memorized.

This meant he couldn’t retrieve e-mail, or get onto Facebook or Pinterest. Oh, boy.

I had generously offered the use of my laptop until his was fixed, as I have an iPhone and an iPad that I can use for many things. But first, he needed to retrieve his passwords.

Paul seemed to want to keep plugging in guesses—and then getting banned for an hour or so—instead of facing the issue head-on. I went to the AOL website and found the contact information he needed to change his e-mail password. “Call,” I said.

He decided to do this about 15 minutes before dinnertime. I was cooking when he called me into the living room, where he was on the phone. “You set this account up,” he said. True. We used to share the account. “The secret question is ‘your school.’ “ Paul looked at me quizzically.

“Village,” I said immediately. That was the name of my elementary school.

Nope. We tried the name of the middle school where I was working at the time we set up our first e-mail account in the 1990s. That wasn’t it. Paul’s grammar school? Nope. His high school had changed names, but neither was the secret answer. Nor was either of our colleges.

It wouldn’t be the second middle school I had worked at, as I didn’t started there until 2003. And it couldn’t possibly be the 7-12 school where I’m located now.

The service assistant in Mumbai told Paul that she couldn’t help him if he couldn’t answer the elusive question.

Supper was sizzling, so I returned to the stove. There the answer came to me. It was the second middle school. We’d had a virus scare around 2005, and I changed all our passwords then!

I ran into the living room, wooden spoon in hand. I blurted out the name of the school. The word from Mumbai? Yes! 

Whew. Ultimately, Paul got into his blogs, Pinterest and whatever else he had passwords  for. I must say, he was much calmer about the disruption in his tech life than I thought he would be, except for occasional moments of panic about whether the genealogical data could be saved.

Finally, Saturday arrived and we headed to the mall. The Apple Store is always a surrealistic experience. The “geniuses” are always polite and friendly but, at the same time, can be a tad robotic.

Customers are greeted immediately and checked in by a genius with an iPad. Then they are directed to another genius, one with an iPad with a green cover. Then, and only then, can customers approach the Genius Bar.

Our genius was very affable and knowledgeable and quickly ascertained the problem. I was ready to argue about the fact that this was a “known issue,” but I didn’t have to. Although our Apple Care insurance had run out, they could offer us a free “extended warranty.”

Well, that was a good thing, as the repair would have cost $500! 

It might take a week, our genius told us, but the hard drive was safe. Paul was happy.

Lo and behold, the computer was ready by Monday, so back we went to pick it up.

We had survived with one computer for four days. We had faced adversity with grace and calm. Let’s hope we don’t have to do this again anytime soon.