It’s Up!
One of many valet parking stations at the toney Biltmore Fashion Center in Phoenix.
Originally posted 12/19/2012
No surprise, the iMac is back on its feet after a day trip to Mac Service Experts in Phoenix. They replaced the defective Seagate HDD under Apple warranty and restored it using my backup drive, again at no charge. Word on the street is that even Seagate’s replacement drives are occasionally failing, which in my guess places Apple in a difficult and potentially costly position. I’m hoping that they change HDD suppliers, but that’s just me.
While waiting, I went out for breakfast, hit a local Ace Hardware for some tubing for a future fresh water tank filter install, and toured the nearby Biltmore Fashion Center. It’s a bit like the Oakbrook Shopping Center in Illinois, but with less open space between the rows of stores. The South side is packed with valet stations and gated validation parking areas, so I wedged the F-250 into a slot in the freeform riff-raff parking on the North side. This shopping center consists mainly of clothing stores, and it impressed me that most of the people wandering about were dressed in full-boogie suits or otherwise upscale, fashion-statement clothing. I was not that memorable in my clean dress shirt and blue jeans, but one does what one can. There was a spacious but suitably-crowded Apple Store there as well.
While I had been in the hardware store, someone started calling for the owner of a red pickup truck, and it was a local painter who had noticed the Truxedo tonneau cover over the bed of the F-250 and wanted to ask about it. He told me that he was trying to avoid getting a rigid fiberglass hinged cover, and I showed him its construction and how it worked. He wound up copying down the brand and phone number noted on the Truxedo’s tag label, and also complaining about the cold nights, which kept his painting jobs from drying.
I had hoped to loop up through Wickenburg on my way back, just for a quick look, but leaving Phoenix at 4 PM made that a losing proposition. I didn’t get back home until 6:30 PM, and was thankful for the GPS because the sky was black and spitting rain, making it more of a challenge to spot my side trail “driveway” in the utter darkness. I would have found it eventually, but the GPS made it easy, announcing how many feet to go before the turn. It’s going to go into the mid-20s for a few hours the next night or two, so it could be a bit crispy getting out of bed in the morning! The propane heater’s tank gauge is signalling for a refill today, so I will address that and perhaps tonight leave the heater on low overnight, lower cabinet/storage doors open, to try to leak a bit of heat down through the floors and to exposed pipes above it. A few hours’ exposure to such low temps should be fine without, but no harm in making sure. The North winds were supposed to have died down long before now, but haven’t. That’ll be the real issue.
I see that those back in Northern Illinois are in for it, starting Thursday, with 2″-6″ of snow and very high winds. The winds are the killer, causing all the problems on the roads. Please be careful, y’all!
Strolling Amok 