Luckily, Danny helped me figure out that I could take the computer in to the Apple Store on the weekend, and find out exactly what was wrong w/the damn thing.
My mom, Rachel and I went to the Apple Store, and the guy ran some high-tech tests. He said there were over 2,000 errors on my hard drive. Not good. It would have to be replaced. I told him how much it sucked that this was happening, since my Apple Care had just expired last month. He said that they don't even MAKE the 250GB hard drives anymore, so I'd get a free upgrade to the 500GB. I asked how much this was going to cost.
He said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it for you."
OMG! He took pity on me and is getting me the new hard drive for FREE!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!
So now I have to wait for the hard drive to come in (he had to order it from elsewhere) and then take my iMac back to the store for them to actually do the replacement. For the time being, I'm stuck using my Asus PC laptop instead. Thankfully it's nice and fast, and my boss said he'll install Photoshop and Premiere on this laptop for me, which was very nice of him. But I'm still going through Mac Withdrawals.
On my Mac, I took full advantage of the OS X Leopard capabilities, specifically using Expose and Spaces. I would keep all my work related Finder windows, and a separate browser full of work email and links open in one Space desktop. Then I'd use another browser in a second space for all my personal crap. And I would use Expose constantly to switch between windows.
Now when I'm using this PC, everything is smushed into one desktop. I can't keep work and play separate. It sucks! I really miss my iMac and I just can't wait til it's fixed and happy and working again. I don't even care if I lose all my files (tho I am going to attempt to salvage whatever I can, if my plan works, this evening).
I'll keep everyone updated on my iMac status! For those who care, here's a scary error message I'd gotten on my mac:
