Fighting Depression with AppleCare
When I first starting writing this blog I used to write in great depth about how the Universe had it in for me. Then I would post my evidence. I have the weirdest luck, and I used to believe that most of it was bad. If there is going to be a hair in anybody's dinner, it will be in mine. If there's a driver smoking, talking on the cellphone, and programming his GPS unit with his feet, he will be in front of me. If there is a puddle of water on the floor and there are three people walking around it, only my socks will sop it up. If the EPA is threatening legal action for toxic waste dumping at $10,000 per violation, I will receive that letter. (Yes, that really happened.)
There is an upside to my luck, however. If there's a hair in my dinner, I'll get a free meal. When driving, I usually pick the best lanes to bypass gridlock. More than that, I get movie posters, freebies, discounts, and special consideration all the time. Things balance out. Eventually, I decided that the bad luck blog entries didn't fit in with the optimistic tone I wanted for this blog so I stopped writing them. Besides, all my luck wasn't bad. That didn't mean that bizarre things stopped happening. I just stopped letting them get me down.
On December 4th, 2007 I had a day that truly tested my mettle. I woke up to find my iBook no longer booted. No amount of coaxing or arcane geek trickery could get that drive to launch to life. She was a goner. Quick research showed that my AppleCare warranty had expired just a scant four days prior. I was prepared for the worst. The old me would have ranted and raved to friends and family. He would have created a crude voodoo doll with a black turtleneck sweater and jeans and done unspeakable things to it.
The new me calmly called my local Apple dealer and asked about my options. They were very expensive. Replacing motherboards usually is. On a whim I set up an appointment with an Apple Genius at the local Apple Store. Then I called my local dealer again (who I had purchased the iBook from) and asked for a list of repairs.
Many of my friends wonder why I bother buying electronic equipment in the first place. It's not as if they work for me. I seem to attract the oddest hardware glitches. This is why I like AppleCare and gladly pay $150+ each time I buy an Apple product. I am probably a very bad investment for Apple, but AppleCare has served me well.
In the three years I owned this iBookG4 I have had the following replaced without cost to me:
When I explained this to the nice gentleman at the Genius Bar he could see that this was an awful lot of main components to go bad for just one person. If they agreed to fix my iBook, I would end up with a second logic board and third new hard drive. After consulting with his manager, however, he told me that repairing my iBook would not be in Apple's best interests or my own. Instead, would I like a shiny new MacBook?
Inside I felt giggly, but outside I maintained a stiff upper lip and calmly said, "Thank you. That would be nice." I didn't squeal once. I had hoped this would be the outcome, but one can never be sure. Apple employees aren't saints and I could have ended up with Mr. Hardnose behind the counter. I was four days past warranty. My experience with Circuit City and my poor Palm Zire72 was lesson enough that certain businesses have no soul where technicalities are concerned. I did almost lose my cool when they replaced my iBook with a black MacBook, however. That was unexpected. I "upgraded" my three year old, buggy, problematic iBookG4 with a $1499 top of the line MacBook. Merry Christmas to me.
And so I wind down to the end of my tale and warn you that there is a moral to it. If I had become depressed I wouldn't have been able to think of a solution to my problem. Being depressed curtails our options. We spend hours dealing with waves of crashing emotion instead of problem solving. In fact, sometimes we tell ourselves that there is no solution and we're just screwed worse than an incandescent bulb at a Global Warming convention. It took me years of practice, but I have been able to learn how to control it. Depression may be caused by a chemical imbalance in our minds, but I have found that certain events and thoughts can trigger episodes. Therefore:
I wouldn't allow myself to be sad, anxious, or angry until I had seen the day through to the end. I firmly believe this decision helped me score. I could have focused on my woeful track record of hair filled soups and fines from the EPA. It's not as if I didn't have ample justification to collapse in a depressed heap, but then I wouldn't have received such a snazzy present under my Christmas tree from Steve Jobs. The Universe is nice to me, after all.
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There is an upside to my luck, however. If there's a hair in my dinner, I'll get a free meal. When driving, I usually pick the best lanes to bypass gridlock. More than that, I get movie posters, freebies, discounts, and special consideration all the time. Things balance out. Eventually, I decided that the bad luck blog entries didn't fit in with the optimistic tone I wanted for this blog so I stopped writing them. Besides, all my luck wasn't bad. That didn't mean that bizarre things stopped happening. I just stopped letting them get me down.
On December 4th, 2007 I had a day that truly tested my mettle. I woke up to find my iBook no longer booted. No amount of coaxing or arcane geek trickery could get that drive to launch to life. She was a goner. Quick research showed that my AppleCare warranty had expired just a scant four days prior. I was prepared for the worst. The old me would have ranted and raved to friends and family. He would have created a crude voodoo doll with a black turtleneck sweater and jeans and done unspeakable things to it.
The new me calmly called my local Apple dealer and asked about my options. They were very expensive. Replacing motherboards usually is. On a whim I set up an appointment with an Apple Genius at the local Apple Store. Then I called my local dealer again (who I had purchased the iBook from) and asked for a list of repairs.
Many of my friends wonder why I bother buying electronic equipment in the first place. It's not as if they work for me. I seem to attract the oddest hardware glitches. This is why I like AppleCare and gladly pay $150+ each time I buy an Apple product. I am probably a very bad investment for Apple, but AppleCare has served me well.
In the three years I owned this iBookG4 I have had the following replaced without cost to me:
- battery
- keyboard
- hard drive (lost all data)
- topcase
- logic board
- keyboard (2nd time)
- hard drive (lost all data - 2nd time)
When I explained this to the nice gentleman at the Genius Bar he could see that this was an awful lot of main components to go bad for just one person. If they agreed to fix my iBook, I would end up with a second logic board and third new hard drive. After consulting with his manager, however, he told me that repairing my iBook would not be in Apple's best interests or my own. Instead, would I like a shiny new MacBook?
Inside I felt giggly, but outside I maintained a stiff upper lip and calmly said, "Thank you. That would be nice." I didn't squeal once. I had hoped this would be the outcome, but one can never be sure. Apple employees aren't saints and I could have ended up with Mr. Hardnose behind the counter. I was four days past warranty. My experience with Circuit City and my poor Palm Zire72 was lesson enough that certain businesses have no soul where technicalities are concerned. I did almost lose my cool when they replaced my iBook with a black MacBook, however. That was unexpected. I "upgraded" my three year old, buggy, problematic iBookG4 with a $1499 top of the line MacBook. Merry Christmas to me.
And so I wind down to the end of my tale and warn you that there is a moral to it. If I had become depressed I wouldn't have been able to think of a solution to my problem. Being depressed curtails our options. We spend hours dealing with waves of crashing emotion instead of problem solving. In fact, sometimes we tell ourselves that there is no solution and we're just screwed worse than an incandescent bulb at a Global Warming convention. It took me years of practice, but I have been able to learn how to control it. Depression may be caused by a chemical imbalance in our minds, but I have found that certain events and thoughts can trigger episodes. Therefore:
Change your thinking; change your life.
I wouldn't allow myself to be sad, anxious, or angry until I had seen the day through to the end. I firmly believe this decision helped me score. I could have focused on my woeful track record of hair filled soups and fines from the EPA. It's not as if I didn't have ample justification to collapse in a depressed heap, but then I wouldn't have received such a snazzy present under my Christmas tree from Steve Jobs. The Universe is nice to me, after all.
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Comments
With this information you can now tell yourself to avoid making serious decisions when you are in the throws of Depression, at least until you can train yourself to think clearer when depressed. It takes a bit of effort but over time you will reap major benefits.
Looking forward to seeing you around more. Thanks for commenting.
~Douglas
Enjoy your new toy.
First time I've read your blog...nice! See, I was just composing an email to a client of mine before the workday was over, and looked up something on the net, and...uh....oh, it's 5 p.m. Funny, I started this whole thing around 4 p.m....
Re: depression
I work with new moms, so try to keep up with PPD and that sort of thing. I remember one study that came out last year which compared moms with PPD who took meds against those who were advised to go for a walk everyday and get more sun, against a third group who took meds AND went for the walk plan.
Turns out the women with the exercise did the best, particularly when it came to long-term aspects of depression. They even trumped the group who did exercise AND meds, which was a bit unexpected.
I agree with your poster about fish oil, though the idea of that is using ANY kind of Omega-3 you can get. Even eggs can be gotten at the store with more Omega-3s in them.
Google "Omega 3," and/or "chronic inflammation" (it relates to depression) Attended a great conference in Chicago this July which had some neat ideas relating to these topics.
That'll keep you busy for awhile.
Now if you'll excuse me...I have a six year old to drag through k12.com's handwriting practice. Isn't homeschooling fun?
Where they list recommended supplements for depression!! Ah, well, thanks to Kelly, it fits here, too!
:)
I had to request a break from our church worship team this week. Hubby can't seem to manage the kids on his own and get them safely to church if I'm already there playing piano. Too much for this stage of the illness. There goes another outlet for my own sanity. We can't go together, since we moved, we're 25 miles away, and rehearsal starts at 7:30 AM. Kids don't wake up that early, and my son's illness won't allow for dragging him out of bed (the neurologist would have my head on a platter).
Looks like you're my only outlet, now! Teehee.
Claire
My results may not be what everybody experiences. I was covered by AppleCare which tends to be very supportive of customer issues, but it's not perfect. I believe what made the difference for me is that I have 7 years of experience extracting help from AppleCare. You need to document all your transactions and repairs. I provided a long list of critical repairs then expressed my severe disappointment with the quality of my purchase which gave me a lot of leverage. I was calm, cool, and collected, but politely adamant that this was not my fault.
They will always, always, always default to assuming user error. They're technical support. They deal with the dumbest of the dumb. Then there is the unfortunate fact that you are a woman and the odds are stacked against you. I have had to take over phone calls for my Mum at times because the tech was assuming she didn't know her ear from her elbow. This is why having a very technically detailed list helps you out. The more intelligently informed you sound, the more detailed your list, the faster your issue is resolved.
I hope these tips help you out in the future should you ever need to get help again. For these reasons, I always pay for AppleCare. It makes a world of difference and I get my investment back three fold.
However, I must take issue with your closing comment. My MacBook is not a toy! I am righteously indignant, I tell you! Offended! How dare you refer to, ahem, my experimentation with my iSight camera and Seesmic as anything but somber business and er, social communication. Really now. You're just as bad as my wife. (^_-)
Thanks for commenting.
Douglas
Thanks for coming by. Don't you just hate it when you lose time? I turned my iPhone on this morning to check on my to do list and somehow ended up researching a French pop artist for my 13yr old. At one point I stopped and said out loud, "What was I supposed to be doing again?"
About those studies: They are the deep dark secrets of the psychology world. I've posted about placebos here recently and how a simple thing such as a positive attitude can make a world of difference in your Depression. I'm not surprised that the group of women that exercised and took meds fared worse. Side-effects alter our quality of life, and psychotropics and their ilk have plenty of side-effects.
Thanks for clarifying about Omega-3s. I'll be sure to pass that on to my friend.
Loved your comments. Hope you come by again. Have fun with homeschooling. The k12.com program is time consuming but very thorough. That's the program we use.
Douglas
I'm sorry if the closed comments policy bothers you. I'm trying to spark conversation in the most recent comments. With the advent of RSS more people follow me, which is great, but not so many comment here anymore. I'm trying to foster current conversations so that there is a community of readers who help each other and can depend on their comments being read and responded to. The Open Forums are for the weekends, and the ADHD Ambition forums will be for a week.
But you don't have to worry about being offtopic. I don't really enforce that, so feel free to post continued conversations. I loved your link. Thanks for posting that. I forwarded it to my friend.
Good luck finding a schedule that works for your family. Sleep is important, so obviously the trick will be to get your son to bed earlier so he can wake up earlier. With AD/HD kids that is SO much easier said than done. ;) I have faith in you. I'm sure you'll manage.
BTW, have you ever thought of B12 supplements? I find those help me neurologically. I don't think they do anything for my depression, but they do help me tic less. They may help your boy neurologically as well.
Douglas
Dang, no photos on Flickr for spontaneously combusting iBooks for me. ;)
~Douglas
I'm still wondering why these comments aren't getting e-mailed to me. The ones from chat #3 are the only ones that the e-mail option has worked.
Hmmm.