Monday, March 1, 2010

Frank Flynn and family supercharge SF to Boston ride (74 days away.....)

Ardent commute cyclist and former long time Apple software engineer, Frank Flynn, replaced the hard drive on my iMac desktop computer for me yesterday! I had seen him at the Farmers Market, and when I asked him if he had any idea as to why my machine was not working based upon what I told him it was doing, he told me to bring it by his house where he could run a few diagnostics on it.

It wasn't long before he determined that my hard drive had died and soon had the Fry's website up and showing me I could buy a drive almost 10 times the size of the dead one for less than  50 bux. When I balked because of installation, he said not to worry, that he had installed several iMac drives before. Well, we got the drive and sure enough, even tho my computer was a fix far more complicated than anything he had ever seen, he figured it out and in an hour he was loading a new operating system on to it!! 

As he was wrapping that up and had turned his attention to my terrabyte sized back up that had also died, his wife, Kiersten, invited me to stay for dinner. Happily I said yes and as seven of us  (with their three kids and her dad, John Weisner (sp?), a retired 31 year Lockheed veteran and still very sharp Cal Tech and UCB PhD), ate a delicious salmon, kale, potato and french bread feast, my computer was busy updating all the software it was finding with the help of Frank's very fast internet connection. 


By the time I got out of of there probably six hours later, I left filled up with the joy of their three spirited kids, Kyle (who is exploring the fencing possibilities at the colleges he is applyiing to for next fall) Fione and Declan, wonderful conversation including talk about the Palo Alto of old and recumbent bicycles, one of Frank's bikes is a BikeE, and a computer that screams!! WoW ! 

So much love and if all that wasn't enough, Frank wants me to come back next weekend to pick up my old drives after he sees what he can salvage from from them over the week ahead. 

How exciting!! Armed now with a/c power and a computer that rages,  look for full steam ahead now here over the 74 days before we soon leave for Boston!! 

    Extra excited THX for all of U!!

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