bedeviled mojo slop

Well, Apple Store called this AM and told me to come pick up the sick iMac. It was now better.

WRONG!

I boot the machine and start working and go to backup my data just in case.

CRASH!

I rebooted a few times and even got the 3 bells sound on startup telling me that there was no RAM present. WOW! The iMac was pretty fucked I thought.

Back to the Apple store ... wherein the iMac snubs me and works without failure and I'm left looking like an idiot.

But I played it smart the second time I brought it home and caught photographic evidence of the iMac meltdown as shown hm'yah.

And as illustrated over h'yah.

BUSTED! You are SOOOOOOOOOOO busted iMac!

Yeah, the graphics are very pretty and very NIN-esque, but the machine was obviously still sick. It's like when you're a kid and you take antibiotics for the first time and you throw up even more because you're actually allergic to penicillin and then they put you on amoxycillin instead and you get better.

And that's where we're at ... Apple is now replacing my logic board a 2nd time. They're out a total of roughly $2000 and I'm out a machine for another day or so.

The work authorization lists the following:

STEPS TO REPRODUCE: turn on - use

Oh, that is awesome

Moral of this continuing story ... BUY APPLECARE!

Coming to you live from the trusty Powerbook G4 800 MHz.

My iMac is sick ... again. It's unfortunate, but I've got AppleCare so no worries here.

The genius at the Apple store went right to ordering a new logic board. I hit her up with details about all the configurations they were going to try and detailed information from the system log. I'd love it if Apple would allow me to create a ticket online when I'm bringing my hardware into the Apple store with log snippets, screen captures, and other supporting information. I want to help and get my hardware working ASAP and if that information is useful to the technician, that's great.

The problem? Well, the iMac would drop the ethernet adapter maybe 5 minutes after starting. It seemed to cycle the ethernet adapter up and down, but it was never able to retrieve another IP address after the initial drop. It also seemed to be dropping my Lacie firewire disk that I use for backup. That was unfortunate because I wasn't able to backup the machine before sending it in for repair.

And if you're purchasing Apple hardware, get the AppleCare! The bill for the logic board and service time without it would've been close to $1000. Scary.

I'm considering dumping Entourage Mail in favor of the standard Mail application in OS X. Here's why ...

If someone leaves a response to one of my blog entries, my blog software sends me an e-mail with a bunch of information about the response. The e-mail also contains links to do things with the response, for example, to delete the response. In Entourage Mail, they show up as hyperlinks after the text that's supposed to be the hyperlink. It makes for an ugly looking e-mail message. I don't want to see hyperlinks. I had chocked it up to the fact that it was my software crafting some weird HTML e-mail, but I'm using standard libraries with no weird HTML. And, if I look at those response e-mails in OS X's Mail application, everything looks fine. Furthermore, I've seen spam e-mails that have embedded links that show up correctly. A security precaution on Microsoft's part? Probably. But, again, spam e-mails with embedded hyperlinks show up correctly. I rest my case.

As this is the only Microsoft application I use on a daily basis under OS X, it seems silly to keep it around. I've got the Office v. X suite, but that's really only for PowerPoint and maybe, on the rare occasion, Excel.

I've already devoted too many cycles to looking at forums as to "why" this might be the case. So far, I've come up with no solution.

Hyperlinks displaying as hyperlinks? Is that too much too ask? Apparently yes. It seems such a trivial reason to dump Entourage Mail, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.

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I came across a little OS X application called coconutIdentityCard that tells you when and where your Mac or iPod was built.

This iMac was built in the USA. Nifty I guess

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Coming to you live from the repaired iMac. I guess it was a faulty power supply. All is well.

And so now the Powerbook sits to the side, its indicator light signaling it is sleeping, waiting patiently for its day to awaken ... yet again.

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My iMac is now being repaired for what is probably a faulty power supply. Today was the worst of its spontaneous shutdown episodes. The machine probably didn't stay on for more than 5 or 15 minutes at a time. Thankfully I'm not more than 15 minutes from the local Apple store.

I have my trusty 800 MHz G4 Powerbook. Life with a slower Mac is better than no Mac at all.

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So, I recently experienced some issue with Flash where I couldn't get any sound from Flash. This was particularly disturbing considering I found the Napoleon Dynamite soundboard yesterday. However, there is a solution that I found on the Macromedia Message Board.

I had the same problem with sound and flash... Ran garage band and all flash sounds work now.

Hooray!

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One thing I've always hated about the Apple "experience" is sometimes you open a disk image and you get an End User License Agreement (EULA) screen that accidentally gets hidden. Maybe you click some other place real quick or whatever. Either way, something happens and the EULA box is hidden. In this situation, I've always had to manually minimize the other windows I've got open just to get to Finder to then get to the EULA window. Clicking on Finder and then using Command-~ (cycle windows from the specific application, in this case, Finder) doesn't seem to do it. Maybe I'm just dense. Right now it's the only thing that annoys me about the Apple "experience".

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I'm posting from my new iMac. I didn't choose to allow it to migrate any settings from my old Powerbook. I had to start fresh 'ya know and leave that old baggage behind.

I did get the wireless mouse and keyboard and am still adjusting to Apple's one-button mouse. Seriously need to get a Mighty Mouse even if it isn't wireless. I need that right-click capability and scroll ball. There's the two-button mouse with scroll wheel that I used with the Powerbook, but ... it's not new.

Finally I have some decent screen real estate at my disposal.

God I'm such a nerd.

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That is all.

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In no particular order, here's a list of things I would not do for Apple product(s).

• Urinate on myself
• Drive my car into a crowd
• Beat people with folding chairs

Others ... well ... just ... read this thread.

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Database Server. Adminstrator. Connectors.

Database Server: Installation was painless. I believe OS X already comes with MySQL installed. Or maybe it's just OS X Server? Either way, MySQL was installed/upgraded to the release I downloded.

Administrator: Great application for managing users, databases, and all the MySQL configuration parameters. I'm impressed and I can't imagine MySQL administration without this GUI. It also allows you to schedule backups of your database(s) through the GUI.

Connectors: Download for your favorite programming language.

I'm happy. The applications just worked. I like that about OS X.

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Yesterday I received my complimentary, not for resale copy of Mac OS X Server.

blojsom ... it's in there. Now I need to order a Dual-G5 so that I can actually run it

Tiger ... purchased.
160GB GB backup drive ... purchased.
Entire contents of Macintosh HD ... backed that thang up.

Tiger upgrading ... proceeding ... finished at 9:06 PM.

Roughly an hour and a half for the total install.
All my music is still around.
None of my mail disappeared.
Indexing for spotlight is going to take about 15 hours ... 16 hours ... 7 hours ... awhile longer.
Programs seem a little slower, but that's probably that new operating system install lag.
New default font is more eye pleasing.

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NetNewsWire 2.0 available.

Download it.
Install it.
Use it.
Love it.

NetNewsWire was the 2nd piece of software I purchased for my Macintosh. ecto was the first.

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