odd-e-yo

ma?

dovid

Shmooze needs your support

help the Shmooze club raise money for the American Cancer Society by donating to Relay for Life. if you'd like to walk with us, go here and sign up!

thanks,
dg

broke(n)mac weekend

or, "I wish I knew how to fix you"

*disclaimer 1: this post is not directly related to (but definitely inspired by) the (very funny) brokeback mountain/mac support spoof, which can be seen here.

**disclaimer 2: while I am of course a mac die-hard, I will admit that even macs have their problems. however, the events of this weekend are my fault. my poor system maintenance practices and love of experimenting with third-party apps coupled with the fact that I have not cleanly re-installed my OS since purchasing the computer have finally come to a head. I still love my mac!

wow. it's finally over. from around 2 PM last afternoon until around 3 this morning, and then again for a few hours off and on today I have been sitting in front of my 51-month-old 15" Titanium 550MHz Apple PowerBook G4 trying to figure out just what was wrong with it. this all started (I think) when I attempted to upgrade from OS 10.4.3 to 10.4.4 a few weeks ago. it didn't work, and after trying again yesterday (as well as installing a few new open-source applications I found) I restarted my 'book only to see it hang at the "Welcome to Mac OS X..." screen. it was then that I commenced troubleshoot mode.

I actually learned a lot about my computer and OS X this weekend. I can now check log files, boot into single-user mode, use the terminal a little more confidently, and patiently sit in front of my computer while re-booting it innumerable times. for over 15 hours.

luckily I keep a (semi-up-to-date) copy of my entire hard drive on an external drive. I was able to boot from that disk, hunt around my hard drive and the internet for problems and solutions and, finally, copy over my /Library and /System folders. I only wish I had tried that yesterday.

I know you probably don't understand or care about most of what you just read, let alone why I didn't give up, but this needed to get out of me somehow.

my roommates and mother reminded me throughout the process that I could just take it in to the Apple store if I couldn't figure out what was up. this was never an option for me. if I can't fix it, I'd rather re-install the OS than pay someone else to do it. and I'm too proud.

I now pledge, to you the internet audience, that I will reform my maintaining ways. hopefully the mac can make it another 4 years before any more major troubleshooting is necessary. I sure found something to pass the time up in my room.

yee-haw,
dg: your company's computer guy