Today I'm thankful for ...
... Apple's Time Machine. Oh heck yes.
Yesterday my Parallels installation of Vista bit it hard. And I mean hard. Its virtual hard drive was so corrupt that chkdsk was trying to recover system files. I blame me dropping my laptop last week, but who knows. Anyways, so I've been using Time Machine quite regularly and so I had a backup of the Vista installation. I opened up the archive, scrolled back to July 20, and there it was: the old versions of the virtual machine. So I just copied them back and Vista is back working again. YAY!
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
26 July 2008
17 July 2008
Halt!
Today I'm thankful for ...
... my Mac sleeping nearly instantaneously. I was at a club last night for an event where I needed my Mac. In a dark corner and on a very short table ledge I perched the Mac. After I was done with a quick bit of work I closed the lid and started to turn away from it. At that instant the Mac tipped off the ledge and made a sickening smack on the floor. I turned back just in time to see it land on its bottom side.
Holy crap.
I picked it up and looked for initial damage. The right side received a dent because I had a laptop security cable plugged in it and it must have landed on that first. But then it must have tipped flat and the whole bottom side clattered to the floor about the same time. Other than that there is no visible damage.
I powered it up to find that it was in fine working condition, no screen cracks, no case cracks, no broken keys or trackpad controls. Then the moment of truth: would the Mac's operating system report errors? After logging back into the computer ... it was fine! Yes! It appears that as soon as I shut the lid the drive stopped spinning and so the heads were already parked when the laptop smacked the concrete. I know the Mac has an accelerometer to suspend the disk in a fall, but I think the Mac was already asleep before it hit the ground.
Back at home I ran a disk check and things looked a-OK. Whew. I'm so glad I set the Mac to hibernatemode 0.
... my Mac sleeping nearly instantaneously. I was at a club last night for an event where I needed my Mac. In a dark corner and on a very short table ledge I perched the Mac. After I was done with a quick bit of work I closed the lid and started to turn away from it. At that instant the Mac tipped off the ledge and made a sickening smack on the floor. I turned back just in time to see it land on its bottom side.
Holy crap.
I picked it up and looked for initial damage. The right side received a dent because I had a laptop security cable plugged in it and it must have landed on that first. But then it must have tipped flat and the whole bottom side clattered to the floor about the same time. Other than that there is no visible damage.
I powered it up to find that it was in fine working condition, no screen cracks, no case cracks, no broken keys or trackpad controls. Then the moment of truth: would the Mac's operating system report errors? After logging back into the computer ... it was fine! Yes! It appears that as soon as I shut the lid the drive stopped spinning and so the heads were already parked when the laptop smacked the concrete. I know the Mac has an accelerometer to suspend the disk in a fall, but I think the Mac was already asleep before it hit the ground.
Back at home I ran a disk check and things looked a-OK. Whew. I'm so glad I set the Mac to hibernatemode 0.
08 July 2008
Quick on the draw
Today I'm thankful for ...
... having upgraded to Photoshop CS3. It really is pretty awesome and my boss and I were able to rapidly fix a number of things on an image for marketing within minutes.
... having upgraded to Photoshop CS3. It really is pretty awesome and my boss and I were able to rapidly fix a number of things on an image for marketing within minutes.
07 July 2008
Today I'm thankful for ...
... trying to reinstall iTunes. After doing the Leopard upgrade I noticed the iPhone was not syncing at all. The System Profiler did show the device as being connected, but then looking in the Console log I was seeing:
I searched around for "USBMuxListenerCreate" problems and almost nowhere did I see an appropriate solution. I was just about to give up right now when I decided to try to download iTunes again. And, what do you know? It worked! No problems syncing anymore.
... trying to reinstall iTunes. After doing the Leopard upgrade I noticed the iPhone was not syncing at all. The System Profiler did show the device as being connected, but then looking in the Console log I was seeing:
Jul 7 00:03:48 Xxxxxx [0x0-0x1e01e].com.apple.iTunes[195]: USBMuxListenerCreate: No such file or directoryI searched around for "USBMuxListenerCreate" problems and almost nowhere did I see an appropriate solution. I was just about to give up right now when I decided to try to download iTunes again. And, what do you know? It worked! No problems syncing anymore.
06 July 2008
SuperDuper saves the day ... again
Today I'm thankful for ...
... SuperDuper. This Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard upgrade sucked beyond belief. The problem: my Macbook Pro had an Apple Partition Table on it when Leopard requires a GUID Partition Table.
(I don't know if it was because this is the new 250 GB hard drive I put in recently and it may have been defaulted to the Apple Partition Table.)
So after backing up my drive to an external HDD in a USB enclosure, I went about trying to upgrade the computer. That's when it put up the error message that my computer's HDD did not have a GUID Partition Table. Well, the problem here is that to change the partitioning to the GUID way requires blanking the hard drive. Which means you have to move all the data off, then back again---to my knowledge. What complicated this is that even though SuperDuper made a bootable copy of Tiger on the external HDD, it's a USB 2.0 enclosure! And booting off of the Leopard install disk didn't let me access the USB device.
So I was in trouble yesterday after having switched my Macbook's HDD to the GUID, but my data lived off on the unreachable external drive. I ended up at Best Buy and found a Western Digital MyBook drive. When I finally got home late I was able to use the Leopard install disk to make the MyBook drive the bootable startup disk. Then running that I was able to reinstall SuperDuper and copy everything off the USB external drive back to the Macbook, and then I was able to rerun the Leopard install on the Macbook as an upgrade, not a fresh install.
Whew.
All told the time expenditure went something like this:
Of course, that doesn't include the extra time required to do all the system updates.
I'm exhausted.
... SuperDuper. This Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard upgrade sucked beyond belief. The problem: my Macbook Pro had an Apple Partition Table on it when Leopard requires a GUID Partition Table.
(I don't know if it was because this is the new 250 GB hard drive I put in recently and it may have been defaulted to the Apple Partition Table.)
So after backing up my drive to an external HDD in a USB enclosure, I went about trying to upgrade the computer. That's when it put up the error message that my computer's HDD did not have a GUID Partition Table. Well, the problem here is that to change the partitioning to the GUID way requires blanking the hard drive. Which means you have to move all the data off, then back again---to my knowledge. What complicated this is that even though SuperDuper made a bootable copy of Tiger on the external HDD, it's a USB 2.0 enclosure! And booting off of the Leopard install disk didn't let me access the USB device.
So I was in trouble yesterday after having switched my Macbook's HDD to the GUID, but my data lived off on the unreachable external drive. I ended up at Best Buy and found a Western Digital MyBook drive. When I finally got home late I was able to use the Leopard install disk to make the MyBook drive the bootable startup disk. Then running that I was able to reinstall SuperDuper and copy everything off the USB external drive back to the Macbook, and then I was able to rerun the Leopard install on the Macbook as an upgrade, not a fresh install.
Whew.
All told the time expenditure went something like this:
- Back up the Macbook to the external USB HDD via Super Duper: 5.25 hours
- Install Leopard on the MyBook drive: 35 minutes
- Copy all data back from the external USB HDD to the Macbook HDD: 3.5 hours
- Upgrade the Macbook Tiger to Leopard: 1 hour
Of course, that doesn't include the extra time required to do all the system updates.
I'm exhausted.
09 June 2008
That's good hash
Today I'm thankful for ...
... md5 being installed on Macs. I couldn't remember how to get the MD5 checksum/hash of a file so I just typed "md5" on the command line and voilà it worked!
Easy breezy...
... md5 being installed on Macs. I couldn't remember how to get the MD5 checksum/hash of a file so I just typed "md5" on the command line and voilà it worked!
> md5 Adium_1.2.5.dmg
MD5 (Adium_1.2.5.dmg) = 308b1fc45bb441b44fde48c8a0485e79
>
Easy breezy...
28 May 2008
Nerds here, nerds there, nerds everywhere
Today I'm thankful for ...
... gatherings like Google I/O. It's nice to know what big companies like Google are doing to try to stay in the developer community. It's fairly clear to me that Google has finally hit that tipping point where they themselves need to solidify their own APIs so they can use them. They have a lot of little projects that have turned into products but each on their own little islands. The first step is to create some congruence in their AJAX APIs and it seems like it's happening. Their RESTful URLs are much more similar than not.
... gatherings like Google I/O. It's nice to know what big companies like Google are doing to try to stay in the developer community. It's fairly clear to me that Google has finally hit that tipping point where they themselves need to solidify their own APIs so they can use them. They have a lot of little projects that have turned into products but each on their own little islands. The first step is to create some congruence in their AJAX APIs and it seems like it's happening. Their RESTful URLs are much more similar than not.
03 May 2008
Laser harps and drivable muffins
Today I'm thankful for ...
... being in the Bay Area, where being a nerd is celebrated. I went to Maker Faire with B and a couple of other friends. It was a blast. I still haven't had a chance to download my pictures yet but it was a trip to see what people do with their spare time. The Eepy Bird professors showed up, the Diet Coke + Mentos people. They're even selling nozzle kits. :)
... being in the Bay Area, where being a nerd is celebrated. I went to Maker Faire with B and a couple of other friends. It was a blast. I still haven't had a chance to download my pictures yet but it was a trip to see what people do with their spare time. The Eepy Bird professors showed up, the Diet Coke + Mentos people. They're even selling nozzle kits. :)
23 April 2008
Polly wants a song, Polly wants a song
Today I'm thankful for ...
... iTunes' duplicate detection. I'm merging all of my music onto my little laptop's hard drive which doubled in size recently. As a result there are a bazillion duplicates since I'm copying several backups en masse to it. But there's a little menu option in iTunes now that lets me manage this mess. Yay.
... iTunes' duplicate detection. I'm merging all of my music onto my little laptop's hard drive which doubled in size recently. As a result there are a bazillion duplicates since I'm copying several backups en masse to it. But there's a little menu option in iTunes now that lets me manage this mess. Yay.
11 April 2008
Daddy Dearest
Today I'm thankful for ...
... chilling with the Dad. I got up late and walked down to the back patio. Dad was sitting there looking at some paintings he's working on. Sure I had promised Mom I'd get some dusting done and maybe even polish her teak cabinets. But Dad and I got to talking for a while. It's good catching up with him and I learn a little bit more about him every time I talk to him. He doesn't say much about his life, so it took a lot of prying to figure out where and when he went to school, who were the people he knew, where he went driving in his car, etc.
Mom is similar too. I never got to know her mom (my maternal grandmother) because she passed away when I was really young. I asked about what she was like. Of course my Mom said "oh she was normal" or things she did were "just regular". But I have no context what that really means. I asked if she was boisterous or quiet, if she was into cooking or arts and crafts. I got a few answers but they're still pretty foggy. I haven't even really seen pictures of her.
Also, credit needs to be given to Super Duper, the awesome backup/copy program for Macs. I'm definitely registering this bad boy. Going from my 120 GB HDD to a new 250 GB HDD was so painless it's crazy! I was dreading the upgrade because I've been through it before where you have to reinstall everything. Unless the drives would be an exact image (e.g. same size) I was thinking that I'd have to go through a backup, reinstall, and transfer process. However, Super Duper creates bootable clones of your hard drive and does it on a file-by-file level. So, no downtime! Yay! So if you ever need to upgrade your Mac's hard drives, definitely give Super Duper a shot!
... chilling with the Dad. I got up late and walked down to the back patio. Dad was sitting there looking at some paintings he's working on. Sure I had promised Mom I'd get some dusting done and maybe even polish her teak cabinets. But Dad and I got to talking for a while. It's good catching up with him and I learn a little bit more about him every time I talk to him. He doesn't say much about his life, so it took a lot of prying to figure out where and when he went to school, who were the people he knew, where he went driving in his car, etc.
Mom is similar too. I never got to know her mom (my maternal grandmother) because she passed away when I was really young. I asked about what she was like. Of course my Mom said "oh she was normal" or things she did were "just regular". But I have no context what that really means. I asked if she was boisterous or quiet, if she was into cooking or arts and crafts. I got a few answers but they're still pretty foggy. I haven't even really seen pictures of her.
Also, credit needs to be given to Super Duper, the awesome backup/copy program for Macs. I'm definitely registering this bad boy. Going from my 120 GB HDD to a new 250 GB HDD was so painless it's crazy! I was dreading the upgrade because I've been through it before where you have to reinstall everything. Unless the drives would be an exact image (e.g. same size) I was thinking that I'd have to go through a backup, reinstall, and transfer process. However, Super Duper creates bootable clones of your hard drive and does it on a file-by-file level. So, no downtime! Yay! So if you ever need to upgrade your Mac's hard drives, definitely give Super Duper a shot!
10 April 2008
Roll up yer sleeves
Today I'm thankful for ...
... remembering that I had forgotten my Torx T-6 screwdrivers at home. Yeah, that would have made the hard drive replacement impossible. Unfortunately the Macbook Pro has two Torx screws right around the memory compartment. TWO. Just TWO. I mean, really? Really really? Why not just use a standard screw? Maybe it's to deter people from opening up the Macbook Pros casually, but still even the plain Macbook makes hard drive replacement a snap! They even have a pull-tab for it! Anyways, I ran back home after work to get the screwdrivers.
I guess I'm also thankful that I've already been through a hard drive replacement so I knew exactly what to do.
... remembering that I had forgotten my Torx T-6 screwdrivers at home. Yeah, that would have made the hard drive replacement impossible. Unfortunately the Macbook Pro has two Torx screws right around the memory compartment. TWO. Just TWO. I mean, really? Really really? Why not just use a standard screw? Maybe it's to deter people from opening up the Macbook Pros casually, but still even the plain Macbook makes hard drive replacement a snap! They even have a pull-tab for it! Anyways, I ran back home after work to get the screwdrivers.
I guess I'm also thankful that I've already been through a hard drive replacement so I knew exactly what to do.
01 April 2008
Can you hear me now?
Today I'm thankful for ...
... finding one little spot in the office that was able to connect to our wireless router. We've been having severe networking problems at the office with our wireless connections and because of that I've been holed up in the back part of the office where I could get a WiFi connection. But it's kinda lonely and dark back there. So I found a little spot near the wall today in the main room that I can use with a strong signal. After a little furniture rearranging I'm set up near one of the whiteboards.
Oh, and I also got to see The Boyfriend after a week of being away. Hugs are an awesome thing. Very awesome.
... finding one little spot in the office that was able to connect to our wireless router. We've been having severe networking problems at the office with our wireless connections and because of that I've been holed up in the back part of the office where I could get a WiFi connection. But it's kinda lonely and dark back there. So I found a little spot near the wall today in the main room that I can use with a strong signal. After a little furniture rearranging I'm set up near one of the whiteboards.
Oh, and I also got to see The Boyfriend after a week of being away. Hugs are an awesome thing. Very awesome.
27 March 2008
Ah, grasshoppa
Today I'm thankful for ...
... getting the chance to do a knowledge transfer over to a couple of colleagues. Unfortunately we've all be running so fast on our individual projects that we haven't had a chance to catch each other up on all the new developments. I was able to steal two of my colleagues this afternoon and walk them through all of the new pages and how they interact with the main parts of the web application we're building. Wow, our system is complex. And tomorrow I'm on a plane ... so it's their last chance to learn from The Master!
... getting the chance to do a knowledge transfer over to a couple of colleagues. Unfortunately we've all be running so fast on our individual projects that we haven't had a chance to catch each other up on all the new developments. I was able to steal two of my colleagues this afternoon and walk them through all of the new pages and how they interact with the main parts of the web application we're building. Wow, our system is complex. And tomorrow I'm on a plane ... so it's their last chance to learn from The Master!
26 March 2008
QWERTYUIOP
Today I'm thankful for ...
... having learned to touchtype. Honestly, I don't know how people get by without doing it. One of my colleagues still does the hunt-and-peck. He was amazed of his productivity increase going from pecking with one finger to TWO fingers. Still, I'm betting that he'd get an amazing improvement if he only use the other 6 fingers and 2 thumbs! I learned how to touchtype in highschool and I've been pretty fast ever since.
... having learned to touchtype. Honestly, I don't know how people get by without doing it. One of my colleagues still does the hunt-and-peck. He was amazed of his productivity increase going from pecking with one finger to TWO fingers. Still, I'm betting that he'd get an amazing improvement if he only use the other 6 fingers and 2 thumbs! I learned how to touchtype in highschool and I've been pretty fast ever since.
06 March 2008
A little company from Cupertino
Today I'm thankful for ...
... Apple's Airport Express. Seriously. This is like the most awesome $100 I've ever spent. If you haven't ever seen it, it's part wireless router, part network audio sound card, part network printer hub, part wireless hub. I have been having problems with my old Linksys router---probably a configuration setup---and I was about ready to give up when I remembered I had the Airport Express. So I plugged the DSL modem into it and changed its mode to be a wireless router (all configurable by software) and it worked instantly! Yes, I have wireless back! I just have to move it to the main room where I can route the audio to the speakers...or maybe not. Maybe I'll route it to my stereo in my room?
... Apple's Airport Express. Seriously. This is like the most awesome $100 I've ever spent. If you haven't ever seen it, it's part wireless router, part network audio sound card, part network printer hub, part wireless hub. I have been having problems with my old Linksys router---probably a configuration setup---and I was about ready to give up when I remembered I had the Airport Express. So I plugged the DSL modem into it and changed its mode to be a wireless router (all configurable by software) and it worked instantly! Yes, I have wireless back! I just have to move it to the main room where I can route the audio to the speakers...or maybe not. Maybe I'll route it to my stereo in my room?
29 February 2008
What goes around ...
Today I'm thankful for ...
... recycling. I got rid of a big pack of cardboard today and it all fit into the recycling bin with a little pushing. And yesterday I went out and did the Green Citizen electronics recycling and got rid of a stack of computer equipment that had been following me around for a while. One of the things was a near-pristine Gravis Ultrasound Max sound card that I had used back in a 386 computer eons ago. I was going to Ebay it, but finally I just decided it was better to get rid of it. And so it went. Even the guy who assisted me at Green Citizen gasped when he saw it.
... recycling. I got rid of a big pack of cardboard today and it all fit into the recycling bin with a little pushing. And yesterday I went out and did the Green Citizen electronics recycling and got rid of a stack of computer equipment that had been following me around for a while. One of the things was a near-pristine Gravis Ultrasound Max sound card that I had used back in a 386 computer eons ago. I was going to Ebay it, but finally I just decided it was better to get rid of it. And so it went. Even the guy who assisted me at Green Citizen gasped when he saw it.
13 February 2008
Geek is chic?
Today I'm thankful for ...
... Dad introducing me to computers, and that I stuck with them. Lately this stupid Macbook Pro has been giving me tons of problems. It couldn't see its firewire port and it wasn't able to sleep. I tried resetting the NVRAM and PRAM according to many guides on the Internet. I took it to the Apple store and they said I might incur a $300 repair and would be out of a computer for weeks.
That is just not going to work for me.
I use my personal laptop also as my work computer. I have many professional licenses on this machine and I can't easily transfer them off. I have insurmountable deadlines too.
So my solution was to figure out if it's a software issue or a hardware issue. My guess is that it's both: Parallels taking over my firewire port and not letting a process sleep; and an aging hard disk that probably is littered with errors from being bumped while it was writing. I got a new 160GB hard disk (40GB more than what I currently have) and after reading many guides I decided to crack open the Macbook case...
Wow, talk about a bazillion screws. Seriously. I had a strip of tape where I could tack the screws so I could remember what order to put them back in. There's probably 2 dozen mini Phillips and Torx-6 screws! But I did it, ever so gingerly moving ribbon cables and unlocking this and that. With the new HDD connected and a fresh Mac OS X install the computer functioned as good as new, sleeping and all. Now I knew that it was most likely a software problem.
What's more interesting is that I swapped the drives back to my old 120GB and now the computer sleeps just fine too!!! I don't get it! My best guess is that jostling the laptop around loosened something and one day when I slept the computer while my Mighty Mouse was on probably put it into a weird power state. By taking out the RAM and swapping the hard drive I think that helped to reset any stuck bits, and the fresh Mac OS X install helped cleanse the rest of it.
Anyways, I'm glad that my introduction to technology happened when I was young and I was never discouraged from pursuing it. There are many girls who get frustrated by being too geeky, but sometimes you just have to follow your passion I guess?
... Dad introducing me to computers, and that I stuck with them. Lately this stupid Macbook Pro has been giving me tons of problems. It couldn't see its firewire port and it wasn't able to sleep. I tried resetting the NVRAM and PRAM according to many guides on the Internet. I took it to the Apple store and they said I might incur a $300 repair and would be out of a computer for weeks.
That is just not going to work for me.
I use my personal laptop also as my work computer. I have many professional licenses on this machine and I can't easily transfer them off. I have insurmountable deadlines too.
So my solution was to figure out if it's a software issue or a hardware issue. My guess is that it's both: Parallels taking over my firewire port and not letting a process sleep; and an aging hard disk that probably is littered with errors from being bumped while it was writing. I got a new 160GB hard disk (40GB more than what I currently have) and after reading many guides I decided to crack open the Macbook case...
Wow, talk about a bazillion screws. Seriously. I had a strip of tape where I could tack the screws so I could remember what order to put them back in. There's probably 2 dozen mini Phillips and Torx-6 screws! But I did it, ever so gingerly moving ribbon cables and unlocking this and that. With the new HDD connected and a fresh Mac OS X install the computer functioned as good as new, sleeping and all. Now I knew that it was most likely a software problem.
What's more interesting is that I swapped the drives back to my old 120GB and now the computer sleeps just fine too!!! I don't get it! My best guess is that jostling the laptop around loosened something and one day when I slept the computer while my Mighty Mouse was on probably put it into a weird power state. By taking out the RAM and swapping the hard drive I think that helped to reset any stuck bits, and the fresh Mac OS X install helped cleanse the rest of it.
Anyways, I'm glad that my introduction to technology happened when I was young and I was never discouraged from pursuing it. There are many girls who get frustrated by being too geeky, but sometimes you just have to follow your passion I guess?
29 January 2008
Not ... dead ... yet
Today I'm thankful for ...
... my Macbook not completely dying on me. It's hobbling along. Ever since yesterday it stopped being able to sleep and so now I'm either forced to do a shutdown or hold down the power button to force it off. It's super-annoying and I don't know why it's happening but at least I'm still able to do work during the day---we're in heavy development right now and I need to get things done by Friday.
... my Macbook not completely dying on me. It's hobbling along. Ever since yesterday it stopped being able to sleep and so now I'm either forced to do a shutdown or hold down the power button to force it off. It's super-annoying and I don't know why it's happening but at least I'm still able to do work during the day---we're in heavy development right now and I need to get things done by Friday.
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