The cell phone call went something like this: “Sorry to bother you dear, but the big Mac’s screen just went dark, and now smoke is coming out of it. What should I do?” My advice (”unplug it”) may have saved more unfortunate damage to the computer, if not the household.
When I returned, the house was redolent with the distinctive odor of fried electronics. When plugged in, the Mac would only click – it showed no signs of trying to boot. A quick visit to that great Mac hardware site, Low End Mac revealed that my prized, liquid-cooled dual G5 had an F- reliability rating, with its motherboard and graphics card being particularly suspect (to be fair, this machine is about 5 years old and has been on continuously).
Linda, in the course of the last year, has pretty much taken over the dual G5, mainly for its 23-inch Apple Cinema display which allows her to keep email, browser, documents et al. open and visible at once. So, of course, her first words were, “How soon until I get my email back?”
On the one hand, I’d purchased a 500 GB hard drive (they’re cheap nowadays) and set Time Machine to back up the dual G5: on the other, both drives were installed in the same, still-smoking chassis. As it happens we have an older, 1.8 GHz G5 (main graphics workstation for the stalled Gulker Photo Archive). Some quick checks of printed and PDF manuals revealed that both machines featured SATA buses and, more importantly for Macs, the same drive mounting hardware. Short story, the drives were OK and it took about 2 hours to get Linda back up: now we’re thinking about the replacement machine…
Toshiba has announced its Micro Nuclear reactor designed for small, remote communities, apartment buildings and small businesses. the 20 by 6-foot device produces 200 kwh and is completely automatic. Designed to run unattended for up to 40 years, the reactor produces electrity for 5 cents a kwh, about half the current grid price. Do we really need nuclear material spread all over the globe?
In light of recent USB troubles, maybe my 80GB backup drive isn’t dead, after all. Nor my USB hub…? Judging by the number of forum posts, Leopard has some issues with USB and Firewire peripherals. Linda’s machine has stopped recognizing her iPod and gives the same ‘Device Removed’ error I was seeing. And we thought Vista was bad…
I’ve decided that the editing post is going to be an essay, and it needs work. So, I’ve moved it…
We’ve been having USB problems (a recurring ‘Device Removed’ dialog) on our Intel Mini: a Google search produced a suggestion that a bum hub could be the cause. Sure enough, when I pulled my D-Link 7-port hub, things started working again. The hub isn’t that old…
Our Baylands walk this morning couldn’t have been prettier. Shorts-and-T-shirt weather has (finally) returned, and I made the roughly 1-mile walk 10 minutes faster than last time.
Spring wildlife abounds: Linda spotted goslings and a pheasant, and I had fun photographing a flock of Commorants and an Egret that was posing photogenically near the dam that seprates Baylands from the Bay. Almost every hiker and jogger on the path wished me a good day: Spring is in the air, and people are in a good mood…
We have a bunch of slightly dated software and (rather more dated) hardware we’d like to move on down the user chain. Stay tuned for the list…
VMware Fusion 1.1.2 has shipped, according to VMware’s Peter Kazanjy. We’re currently running Windows XP on Fusion.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory consists of a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice some 2,500 meters below the surface. The ice, said to be about 60,000 years old, will eventually hold 80 boreholes (made by pumping hot water at high pressure), each holding a 2.5 kilometer string of optical detectors. IceCube, though only partially complete, is already detecting the extremely elusive neutrino, a near-massless, chargeless particle which normally passes through the entire mass of the planet undisturbed.
“Apple’s profit climbed 36% to $1.05 billion as revenue jumped 43%, lifted by continued robust demand for Macintosh computers and iPhone smartphones. Shipments of Macintosh computers surged 51% from a year ago and iPod unit sales held steady at 10.6 million, allaying concerns the company would be hit by a consumer pullback. Quarterly iPhone sales reached 1.7 million. ‘We have strong momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters,’ said CEO Steve Jobs.” From the WSJ…
Jon Tringham is planning to bicycle around the world, starting in July. Good luck, Jon…
My (physical) desktop used to be a lot cleaner, back when I was running Linux.
So, as you may be seeing, we’re working on the theme for our WordPress blog. WordPress makes it very easy to change themes, but I haven’t found a way to park the new theme on another URL while I twiddle with it.
Just made our first (successful) fix to this, the Modernpaper Theme. Coming up (we hope) a new logo.
Apologies for any ‘theme trauma’ that may ensue…
A ‘chick flick’ (Linda’s description, not mine) shows (L to R) Linda (a lay eucharistic minister), the Rev. Frannie Hall-Kieschnick and the Rev. Beth Foote presiding at Sunday’s 10:30 service at Trinity. The sermon, which beautifully helped us walk through the stages of lamentation over rector Mike Spillane’s death, was delivered by Stanford’s Rev. Coryl Lassen.
Sunday’s service and Saturday’s rousing memorial for Mike helped me through what had been a very difficult week. Mike had a more aggressive form of the cancer that I have, and it was hard not to see myself in Mike on his final path. Mike’s courage was such, that in many ways, I was left with a great gift: Mike counseled and encouraged me almost to the end, and his widow Julie, picked up where he left off. I may never have known two more caring people than Mike and Julie Spillane.
But, life goes on. From Mike I have the resolve to make the very best of the time left to me. So, we’re off to the gym, shopping and then back to work on the new weblog…
Today we attended the first memorial service for Mile Spillane, which was hard, despite his valiant widow Julie’s charm and gracious spirit. Earlier in the day I’d had a MRI and consult with my neuro-oncologists at UCSF – the news was good – which hadn’t been the case for Mike in weeks previous. I still remember our Sunday chats…