My travel plans have made it difficult for me to take my bricked MacBook Pro somewhere to get repaired. After much consideration, I decided to invest in an almost-new refurbished MacBook Pro to replace my bricked one, which is ten years old and has served me well for the past two. When I’m stationary for a while, I can afford the downtime to get it repaired, especially since I no longer rely on it for work. It will become my backup laptop, enabling me to stay within the Apple ecosystem instead of dealing with my old Windows machines.
I ordered it online and had it delivered to the Manchester, New Hampshire Apple Store yesterday. This coincided nicely with my drive from Rochester back to Jaffrey for my last week in New England. The Mall of New Hampshire was right along my route, easy on, easy off the highway. The pickup was no problem at all, though they don’t go through the initial setup with me as Allison suggested I have them do. I guess maybe they don’t do that anymore. They also couldn’t take a look at my bricked MacBook without an appointment. So I returned to the van and set a course for Jaffrey.
Phone Foibles
During this process, my iPhone crashed, turned off, and refused to turn back on again, even with repeated hard reset keystrokes. After many attempts, I decided that since I was already at an Apple Store, I’d take the phone inside and see what they could do. They understood my “just passing through” situation, and though I had to make an appointment with a half-hour wait, they actually got me in much sooner than that.
Both people who helped me with the phone were also named Justin. The tech had looked up the serial number and asked me about the last time I brought the phone in for the same problem last October. I’ve only had this phone since March when I bought it refurbished through Verizon. Except it apparently was not refurbished but sold to me with exactly the same problem the previous owner had exchanged it for. I am not pleased. The Apple Justins were great, though. One last Hail Mary try to revive my phone with a reset actually worked, so I’m able to use it again. They sent me away with all the data they had about its history of problems, which I intend to take to Verizon to see what they can do for me. I paid for a refurbished phone, and while I don’t expect perfection, I do expect a phone without routine crashes.
Charger Challenges
I made my way back to Jaffrey through some nasty thunderstorms, even pulling over to wait one out because I couldn’t see where I was going. I collected the goodies I’ve been having delivered there for this moment, then settled down to set up my new MacBook. It works beautifully, but the included charger was not charging it. I tried plugging it into both of my power stations (yes, I have two now — more about that in another post) as well as the big inverter in my van, but all I got was a flashing amber light and no charge. If I can’t charge my laptop, I can’t use it, particularly because MacBooks won’t run straight from the adapter if the battery is dead.
Allison was already on her way to meet me for dinner, and to bring me my old CD collection to convert into electronic form (something she’d taken them to do for me immediately after the fire, but never got around to). She’s had her own MacBook cables and chargers with her, so we were able to troubleshoot the problem as a defective MagSafe cable, straight out of the sealed box from Apple. Fortunately, newer MacBooks like this one can also charge from their USB-C ports, which worked perfectly. In fact, the 12-volt charger I’d been using for my backup backup laptop is a USB-C charger and works perfectly with my MacBook. I don’t have to go buy a special 12-volt adapter for my MacBook, because I already have one.
My stress level returned to normal. Despite the defective cable, I’ll still be able to work, using the USB-C cables instead. I should still get a working MagSafe cable from Apple, because that’s part of what I paid for when I bought the MacBook. But getting one is no longer an emergency, just an annoyance.
I think I’m done buying refurbished devices to save a few bucks. This makes two out of two refurbished Apple devices I’ve bought and had problems with. A friend of mine said, “Refurb on those things means spit on it and then wipe it with a microfiber cloth.” I’m beginning to believe him.
This has little to do with life on the road in general. But it’s a huge part of my personal journey, as well as the digital nomad life. We rely on this technology to make our living, and to continue living the way we do. When technology fails — particularly technology that we paid a lot of money for and expect to work — it affects the rest of our lives.
All this is true for any remote worker, but on top of all that, it’s extremely difficult for us to resolve these problems because we’re constantly on the move. I’m leaving New England on Monday to begin my trip west for the Rocky Mountain Roll in early August. I can’t wait a week or two for a part or replacement device to arrive, because either I’ll be a thousand miles away by then, or I’ll miss the event I’m planning all of my summer travel around. This is why I have backups, and then backups for the backups. It seems crazy and paranoid until two laptops fail at the same time and I have to rely on that last-ditch backup for a week — a week that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to work.
Smokey Da Van 