Well, last night the plethora of technical problems I've been experiencing with my Mac since paying more than half its original purchase price to have it repaired has reached a crescendo. It has eaten a DVD. Because Apple was wise and removed the pinhole that forces the CD drive to manually eject a jammed disk, I have to send the computer to their technical support people. This will be my second week this year without a computer. Hopefully they'll mail me the dvd back, as its a movie rental and I have to return it.

Perhaps I'll get the computer and the DVD back and they'll have fixed all of the new problems that it has and we'll all live happily ever after. I'm not getting my hopes up. During the pre-shipment interview their tech support guy asked me whether I had Apple or third party RAM. I honestly don't recall, as I bought the computer over a year ago. The RAM is one thing that has never given me any trouble. The support guy says "our repair technicians don't like 3rd party RAM and have a nasty habit of pulling it out and throwing it into the trash, so be sure and check before you mail your computer to us."

I don't know whether this was a threat or a warning, but either way, a company that is so NIH that they are willing to destroy their own customer's property simply because it wasn't purchased from them is extremely dysfunctional to say the least. Can't they put the RAM in a baggie and mail it back with the computer? Couldn't they have done that with my perfectly functional hard drive the last time they decided to rip IT out and throw it into the trash?

On the bright side, a coworked picked today to ask me whether or not he should buy a Mac.