Weblog of a “Switcher”

I had a bit of a scare this morning. I was happily reading my news feeds and checking out a few programs I had found through those feeds when all of a sudden I got a "Gray Screen Of Death". The Macintosh equivalent of the dreaded Windows Blue Screen Of Death.

I rebooted a few times and was still getting the GSOD. I was starting to panic myself. I had pretty much finished my migration to the Mac. I have a ton of files on the Mac that I copied over from the Windows boxes and removed from them. I was starting to think I was going to have to waste them to reinstall OS X.

You see, my track record with Linux/Unix systems is not very good. I'm batting just about 1.000 when it comes to killing Linux/Unix systems. It really doesn't matter what they are. TiVo's, routers, installed Linux distro's, etc... If it has something to do with Linux, I'll kill it at some point in time.

So I started the "diagnostic" process. I rebooted with Command-Option-P-R, then just the Option key held down, no joy. I attempted to boot from CD-ROM, but still no joy. I did find that the kernel was panicking before user login. I finally found the process of rebooting with the Shift key held down, bringing the computer into Safe Mode. That finally stopped the Kernel Panics.

So, after about a half an hour of my attempting everything I could think of, I started the process of getting ahold of someone at Apple Care. While waiting on the phone for a tech, I started thinking. Since the panic is occurring before a user logs in, the problem must be something that is getting loaded up before users get logged in.

So I started poking around in the /Library folder and found the /Library/StartupItems folder. I had a feeling that the program causing all this was a CiscoVPN client I had installed the night before. I found a couple of files in the /Library/StartupItems folder and moved them out. I then looked in the /Library/Extensions folder and found a file in there that went with the VPN client. I moved it out of that folder too.

I then rebooted and presto, no kernel panic. I kept testing the system and kept waiting for a tech from Apple just to make sure I was doing the correct thing. Then something even more amazing happened.

An American answered the phone! I was almost shocked speechless. Apple hasn't outsourced it's tech support to India! So I asked the tech about the problem I experienced and my procedure on solving the problem. He assured me that he would have walked me through the same process trying to track down the problem. So I thanked him for his time and hung up.

What did I take away from the experience. One: I'm pretty darn good and solving problems with computers. Even ones I haven't used in over 5 years and more importantly, Two: Apple's tech support has to be the best of all the computer manufacturers out there. Finally, Three: Mac's ROCK!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Ahold, Blue Screen Of Death, Command Option, Gray Screen, Half An Hour, Kernel Panics, Library Extensions, Library Folder, Macintosh Equivalent, News Feeds, Option Key, Os X, Point In Time, Safe Mode, Scare, Shift Key, Tivo, Unix Systems, Vpn Client, Windows Blue Screen Of Death

I've spent the better part of the week "migrating" from Windows to Mac as well as from MacBook to Mac Pro. The later was the easiest part of the migration. Apple's Migration Assistant makes moving from one Mac to another a true breeze. I was very pleasantly surprised to find Firefox and all the extensions I installed on my MacBook over on the Mac Pro ready and waiting for me.

I'm now finishing up the process of moving my iTunes files from Windows to the Mac. I really find it hard to believe that Apple or some other person hasn't written a program to do this process. Granted, it's not a major undertaking, but for someone like my parents, it's impossible to do and keep the ratings and playcounts.

I have actually done an iTunes migration once before. It was from a Windows system to a Windows system. I changed the drive that the music files were stored on and had to go through this process to get the iTunes Music Library.xml file adjusted to the correct paths.

After the iTunes migration is compete, then it will be just a matter of moving the files I want off my Windows system and on to the Mac Pro and I'll be completely "switched".

I'm also on the lookout for some good backup software. I've seen a couple in blog reviews, but I'm still looking.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Backup Software, Correct Paths, Firefox, iTunes, Lookout, Macbook, Migration Assistant, Moving, Music Files, Music Library, Parents, Undertaking, Windows Mac, Windows System

Last evening, I ordered my desktop Mac. A Mac Pro. What an amazing machine. Quad Xeon processors, SLI Video, 2GB's RAM, and 500GB's HD.

The Mac Pro is leaps and bounds above anything I have seen other companies make. It has 4, count them, 4 SATA HD bays, 2 optical bays, 8 Memory slots (for up to 16GB's of RAM), all Mac Pro's have Quad Xeon processors, it has 3 PCI-Express slots and a double wide PCI-Express slot (I'm assuming for SLI). All easily accessable.

According to my order page, the new machine should arrive on my birthday (Aug. 16th).

Life is good!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: 2gb, Amazing Video, Bays, Desktop Mac, Hd, Leaps And Bounds, Memory Slots, Pci Express Slot, Pci Slot, Pci Slots, Quad Processors, Video Ram, Xeon Processors

I don't normally crosspost anything, but this article needs as much exposure as I can give it.

I'm deviating from my normal posts here to “bitch” about Bloglines.

It’s been a really long time since I started using Bloglines. I can’t even remember. I know it was less than 6 months after they opened their doors. I was in love. A feed reader that basically followed you where ever you went.

I used it at home and work. I also used it when on the road when we went on vacations. I could always stay up-to-date with what was going on and not have to worry about reading a story more than once! This held true for quite some time.

In the last year, something has started happening with Bloglines. It wasn’t long after they were bought by AskJeeves (now Ask.com) that things started to go down hill. Now this could be a coincidence, or it could be due to the purchase.

A feature I used ever since it was released to the public: Keep New, started acting up. Keep New is a checkbox in the article that allowed the Bloglines user to keep the article new no matter what. Every time you opened the feed, the article would be there along with other really new articles.

In the last year, the feature started acting strange. I would see I had some Keep New articles due to a second number in parenthesis after the number of new articles which is also in parenthesis. I would open the feed to see them, and not find them. Even after reading all the new articles, I would try opening the feed and get nothing. Sometimes I could tell Bloglines to show me posts from a month ago, and the Keep New articles would be buried in with the other articles it would bring up.

So I stopped using Keep New.

I sent several bug reports to Bloglines in hopes that this problem would get fixed. I did get responses from the Bloglines crew, but alas, the problem was never fixed. Or at least so I thought.

Then I noticed I had a Keep New that I had set and I was still able to get to it even after a few days. I first thought that Bloglines had finally fixed the bug. But other feeds still didn’t show. I noticed a difference in the way the feeds properties were set. The one that was working had “Updated Items” in the feed properties set to “Display as New”. The one that wasn’t working was set to “Ignore”. I changed a few that were set to Ignore to Display as New and found I was able to keep my Keep New articles findable again.

I thought I had the problem licked until I realized what that setting really did. Every article that was updated by the writer, even if a single character was changed, would appear again in the feed as new. At first I didn’t mind too much, but over time it got so bad that I though I was using a desktop client for a feed reader. Reading posts I had read days if not weeks ago.

So I turned the feature off and decided to live without Keep New again. Except I found that the Keep New posts were still staying visible even after switching back to Ignore for Updated Items. That was a surprise and a pleasant one at that.

Now we come to present time, and once again, the Keep New posts are fading into the sunset. I really don’t understand this. Am I the only person using Bloglines that uses this feature? I find that hard to believe.

I’m tired of waiting for this feature to be fixed, if they even acknowledge that there is a problem with it at all. So I’ve decided to give up on Bloglines finally.

I’m currently in the process of finding a new reader. Alas it will wind up being a desktop client since the “other” web based readers all suck big time! I have looked at all of them. Including FeedLounge, a non-free web based feed reader.

I’m looking at NewsNetWire for the Mac and NewsGator for Windows only because there is a chance that they can keep each other up-to-date as to which posts I have read and which I haven’t.

But that isn’t the reason for this “Freedbacking” post. It’s to let Bloglines know how I feel about this whole Keep New thing and how it has chased a long time user away from your tool.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Bitch, Bug Reports, Checkbox, Coincidence, Doors, Feed Reader, Few Days, Long Time, Love, New Articles, Parenthesis, Quite Some Time, Tho, Vacations