So, quick story.

It was a dark and stormy night. Johnny Cash was playing on the Jukebox, singing about his empire of dirt. My battered Harley was parked out front. A half ashed Marlboro Red hung from my dry lip, the smoke stinging my eyes, as I nursed another highball. The bar was worn oak, threadbare, from a thousand average joes like me, with a thousand stories, sobbing into their beers. The light was dim, like my prospects, lit, mostly, from the screen of my Mac Book Pro. I was trying to forward a important email to all my friends and family. It was an important email about an exiled prince from Nigeria who has a million dollars he wants to split with me (I met him on craigslist when I was trying to sell a set of Hello Kitty tire stem caps). The kicker was I just needed to come up with a couple of thousand bucks to lend him so he could get on a plane ticket to Houston where the money is. I knew my friends and family would want in on this deal. It was a sure thing. It had to be, dammit. But the button on the computer was all clicked out. I had no click. No clickage. Click? Nope, don’t got any. The trackpad button wouldn’t work. I couldn’t send off the email. The dammed thing. That’s my hard luck story. One story in a million in the big city. Bartender, slide me another…

Turns out, the battery on my Mac Book Pro suddenly swelled up. Not good. Next stop, explosion city and the eleven o’clock news. I figured this out because it swelled enough enough to eliminate all the space for the track pad button to depress inside the case. No battery equalled plenty of click. After some head scratching, tinkering, a sandwich, a ten thousand piece three-d puzzle of stonehenge, and a episode of CSI (you know, for the sleuthing vibe) I figured this out.

Next stop, Appleville. I took my battery into the Apple store and showed it to to the frickin’ geniuses there. (Now, could that sound more sarcastic? I submit that it could not.) Some genius there quickly took the old battery off my hands, see, and recycled it, see, and gave me a shiny new one, see. For free. Keep in mind, my battery is almost 3 years old. The replacement is a $130.00. I couldn’t believe it. I kept looking over the shoulder for a guy in a suit, dark glasses, and an ear piece to come hot, weapons drawn, and talking into his sleeve about taking “the shot”.

I have another random story about Apple customer service. A while back I took apart a Mac mini to upgrade the Ram. This procedure is tricky, requiring the use of two paint spatulas, a m-80 firecracker, a backhoe, and some warm chewing gum. Yes, it has to be warm. Midway through the procedure, things, um, got away from me, and I did an impression of an old timey vaudeville act. I ran around screaming “I got it! I got it! I got it!” bobbling the naked motherboard around in my hands like NFL receiver trying to haul in the game winning catch. All to the sounds of some honkey tonk ragtime piano music. Then, of course, I screamed “I don’t got it!” which was followed by a sickening crunch, a small fire, and a rift in the space-time continuum. I broke the IR receiver right off the motherboard. So after I nearly burned down my neighbors house trying to solder it back on (you don’t think I solder at HOME do you?). I took finally took it into the genius bar, fully expecting a bank busting bill. When the Apple genius asked me what happened, I fessed up and told the truth (cause, that’s just how I roll, McDuff), and, much to my shock, they said that since I didn’t lie, they’d fix it for free. Seriously. Me dropping an open computer onto the ground and breaking something off the motherboard is NOT covered by ANY warranty that I know of. Sweet.

Mike is happy Apple customer today. Also he’s hopped on the goofballs. Of the over the counter cold medicine variety.

Peace out, crime fighting dog.