collisionbend.com

So:

I re-seated my RAM a second time, and the MacBook ran perfectly — for a day. Then it was back to its bag of tricks.

I reset the Power Management Unit — twice. No dice.

I reset the PRAM — twice. No dice.

I re-seated the RAM a third time, then reset the PRAM then reset the PMU again. Still no dice.

I have spent several hours over the past week trying to resolve this issue, and now the computer is going back to the factory for service (at the same time that our beloved G4 iBook had its battery recalled).

At least it won’t cost me anything.

The rep at Microcenter told me that they would have had to ship it out — and charge me $59.95 in advance. No refund later, either. This was after Apple Care told me that my repair wouldn’t cost me “a single dime.” I don’t know how Microcenter achieved “Authorized Repair Center” status for charging people within their warranty period.

How about the Apple store in Legacy Village? Well, you have to have an appointment to see a tech. In advance. No walk-ins. No service. I’m not going to drive all over town for the sake of a laptop that won’t work for my sake.

So I called Apple again. My MacBook will be gone for up to two weeks (they said 10 days minimum). Great. No work. No income. Nothing.

So what is the computer’s problem? Well, this is what I think (this hasn’t been confirmed by Apple — hell, they won’t even admit there’s a problem when over 15% of the MacBooks present with this issue at almost exactly 6 weeks of service!): the computer runs too hot, baking the internal components — all but the hard drive. Different MacBook owners have had different parts replaced to fix the problem, but this is a matter of what bakes when. I think that the units that have had more items replaced were the ones that are running more hours per day.

It makes sense, at least.

This is a problem, and Apple needs to face the music. Now. This is a sweet little laptop (erm… “notebook”) — when it runs.

It’s too bad I can barely get it to boot up.

(71.8 — 71.4 — 0.4!!!!!!)

My six-week-old MacBook (week 26) is suddenly narcoleptic.

I’ve done all of the prescribed tests, including reseating my RAM, and it still takes dozens of attempts to start the computer before it actually boots completely. Once it starts, there is no guarantee that it will continue to function until it’s been up for about 10 minutes — then it will run for hours non-stop, without a single flaw or choke.

This is not a rare condition, either. It has been documented in several places, like here, and here, and here (look under “Problems”).

Even YouTube has been getting submissions on this. (Caution: some of these videos are hilarious!)

I installed the latest firmware update this weekend, and it only seems to have made the problem worse.

Apple is aware of the problem, but they have done nothing about it; they prefer to censor the support forum threads by closing and locking them: disgruntled MacBook owners just open another thread; Apple has closed and locked 30 or 40 threads on this issue on their support forum web site so far.

I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Apple support on this issue earlier this afternoon. Brian (the tech support guy) seemed shocked when I told him that I tried to start my MacBook today about 30 times before it finally started. (Truth be told, he tried to act as if he had never heard of the problem before, which annoyed me.)

“30 times?” he asked.

“Well, it may not have been exactly 30 times. I wasn’t actually counting,” I replied; “it may have been more like 35 or 40 times…” I said into a dead-silent phone.

I wonder what Apple intends to do here. Possibly thousands of the initial run of MacBooks have this issue; a recall seems to be in order.

We’ll wait and see. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE — There is some evidence to suggest that reseating the RAM actually does the trick.

I went back in and reseated the RAM a second time after having some misgivings about how it was seated in the first place: the RAM didn’t look like it was in parallel to the case. Ever since, my MacBook has booted consistently (3 times, once on battery power).

There is also some evidence that this is a temporary fix, however. We’ll see.

If poorly-seated RAM is the issue, the one PIA of this computer will be having to carry around a 00 (double-ought) Philips-head screwdriver to reseat the RAM every few weeks.

But, if that is the issue, and that is what will fix it, I think a 59-cent tool in my laptop bag won’t add too much weight.

(71.8 — 67.8 — 4)

Primers here and here.

This guy is scary.

I’m not sure who the “millions of muslims that have been killed” are. I’m really not.

I remember reading about the 11 million people, including 6.2 million Jews, killed under the rule of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of them may have been muslim, I’m sure; however, far many more Christians died at Hitler’s hands than muslims, I guarantee.

I remember reading about the 40 million people that died under the rule of Josef Stalin in the U.S.S.R. from the early 1920s to the late 1950s under the pogroms and the purges. It is from this reign of terror that the expression “keep your allies close, and your enemies closer” has its roots. I’m sure that many muslims died at Stalin’s hands, as well.

And, sure, many thousands of muslims died at the hands of a series of crusades by insane Christians that held the belief that if you didn’t believe their way, you should die.

But that was 700 years ago; we’re all a lot smarter and a lot more enlightened today.

Well, most of us. Please read on.

Total it all up, and I seriously doubt if “millions of muslims” have died, at least at the hands of the West, in reality. Many thousands of muslims, as well as millions of Christians, and millions of Jews — have all died in the name of one thing: God.

Now we have teachers of Islam, one of the most peaceful religions on the planet, teaching that attacking and killing thousands of innocent people is a righteous thing to do — in the name of an unseen cadre of “millions of muslims” that have been killed.

You have to wonder what this guy — as well as Osama bin Laden — as well as any other terrorist that preceded him — is smoking.

As I understand Islam, war is against the Five Pillars of Islam, only to be taken up when someone invades in order to subjugate, which has never been the desire of the West for the Middle East — well, at least publicly.

I can understand the anger at what has gone on in the Middle East, the role of the West, and more. What I can’t understand is the wholesale slaughter of innocents by those who, like Abdullah agrees, aren’t instructed by God “to go out and kill innocent people.”

Let’s get one thing straight here: God doesn’t instruct anyone to go out and kill innocent people; people instruct people to go out and kill innocent people.

And while many major peaceable religions say that self defense is a righteous thing, these extremists are taking their peaceful religion and twisting it to say that it’s OK to go out of your way to attack and kill those with whom you disagree, as if they were the ones that attacked you in the first place.

Ohhhhh-Kay.

Xiolin (Shao-lin) teaches the Tao te Ching, which is the premise that one should go with the flow of things and be at peace with everything (to paraphrase severely). Only if one is faced with an intractable foe should one use deadly force — in fact, the use of deadly force is a shameful thing, unless it is so justified.

The Tao te Ching also states: “trying to manipulate the force of all is like playing with the Master Carpenter’s tools: one is apt to cut oneself.”

I can’t agree more.

So I have to question the sanity of those who make those instructions and say that “God says it’s OK: it’s your duty; go kill.”

Yeah, right.

The funny thing is that it’s starting to create a backlash here at home — even among those who abhor the violence (as I do). I have heard many peaceable folk speak about “eradicating” these extremists from the face of the Earth.

And if these extremists keep up the crap, that is exactly what will happen; it’s the way of things.

~~~~~

On a related note, my bride and I attended the Cinema at the Square tonight. The feature: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” starring Gregory Peck.

Anyone familiar with the story will tell you even today that this country has a lot to learn about tolerance (which is why I said “read on” earlier).

I have never seen this flick on a large screen, uncut and in one sitting; I now have a more enlightened opinion of one of America’s best examples of cinematic art.

It’s a shame that no one, either in the parking garage or at the box office, knew about the $1 parking offer from the ad in the Pee Dee’s Friday magazine: they both said to speak to the other guy.

While the experience was excellent, and it was grand to see the theater in its restored condition, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this series to anyone while such blatant false advertising is going on.

So, what do I conclude from all of this?

Well, we (humans) are not perfect. None of us. We try; we fail; we try; we succeed.

Life is a learning process. All we can really do in this world is to try to leave things a little better than when we found them, so that the next people in our — or other’s — shoes will find the walking a little bit easier.

And I wish someone would show Osama bin Laden “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He needs to get the message.

This entry is cross-posted at blogcritics.

There’s been a lot of security issues posted about the Internet lately. Some of them involve Google, the well-known and well-used search engine.

Now, before I write the rest of this piece, let me tell you in no uncertain terms that I use Google daily. I like Google. It finds what I’m looking for. It does what it’s supposed to do.

In short, it works.

Recently, my PC died, and I replaced it with a new Intel CoreDuo MacBook. I love this computer for the same reasons I like Google: it simply works. It even does Windows — better than a PC can, I might add.

But I ran into something quite disturbing this morning. I was viewing my firewall reports because of an unusual error notice.

My six-week-old Mac was trying to “phone home” — to Google!

So I fired up my email program:

Dear Google (this is an open letter):

My firewall recently gave me this warning:

Aug 12 12:41:29 [this]-computer kernel[0]: Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 10.0.1.2:50626 from 64.233.179.104:80

So I ran a WHOIS and found this:

Server Used: [ whois.ARIN.net ]
64.233.179.99 = [ ]

OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US
NetRange: 64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255
CIDR: 64.233.160.0/19
NetName: GOOGLE
NetHandle: NET-64-233-160-0-1
Parent: NET-64-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.GOOGLE.COM
NameServer: NS2.GOOGLE.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2003-08-18
Updated: 2004-03-05
RTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
RTechName: Google Inc.
RTechPhone: 1-650-318-0200
RTechEmail: arin-contact@google.com

OrgTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechName: Google Inc.
OrgTechPhone: 1-650-318-0200
OrgTechEmail: arin-contact@google.com

ARIN WHOIS database last updated 2006-08-16 19: 10

Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.

Questions:
1) What are you doing in my computer?
2) Why are you doing what you are doing in my computer?
3) Why is my computer trying to “phone home” to Google — behind my back?

Fortunately, my computer has a excellent firewall that blocked the communication. I find this occurrence extremely disturbing; please enlighten me.

Sincerely,

William Kessel

–

http:/www.collisionbend.com

I’ll keep you posted on their reply.

The Western world is abuzz with the news of Fidel Castro handing over control of Cuba to his younger brother, Raul.

In fact, some folks are up in arms about the fact that there are many active “dead pools” speculating on his date — and possibly time — of the Cuban despot’s actual time of death.

Here’s the scoop: a dead pool is a bet. There’s a couple of different methods, but most rely on the common grid layout just like the football pool you play at work. You pick a date and a time, pay your money, and your name is entered on the grid. The person with the closest date and time without passing the actual point of death is the winner.

People covering this event — well, the dead pool — are acting like it’s a unique thing.

It’s not. And there are folks that think that this “unusual” phenomenon is a ghastly, sinful occurance.

It’s not.

Well, ghastly, maybe, but not unusual. Far from it.

Dead pools are a common thing in newsrooms. In fact, when I was working in the newsroom of the Ohio State Lantern, we had several dead pools running at any particular time. Sometimes they were about a particular person; other times they were about several people and what day they would die.

I can remember that our dead pools included Richard Nixon, Terry Anderson (everybody lost on that one), and few others. Everybody in the newsroom had money on one person or another; that was the way of things.

And it continues, even though modern newsrooms frown on the practice.

However, they persist. People decry the practice. They say it’s unchristian, morbid, immoral, whatever. They’re probably right, too.

But people will gamble on anything.

I love playing p*o*k*e*r online. I only go with play chips, no real money (my bride would kill me if I did). I like the challenge, the strategy, and the skill required to play the game.

It really is a game of skill rather than a game of luck.

I’m getting pretty good, too, as I can sit in a 90-seat tournament and, if I keep my smarts, I can usually cash (land in the top 9, the final table) in almost any tourney I enter. I win a 90-seater about once a week. I’ve gone from an intial 1,000 chip balance to about 210,000 at one site — only playing 250 chip buy-in sit-n-go’s, with 1st place prizes around 3,200 chips. Not too shabby.

Thing is, that’s not gambling. Dead pools, however, are, just like your office football pools.

My feeling is this: if you want to bet on the dead, go ahead. If you want to bet against another’s cards, or potential cards, go ahead. If you want to bet online for or against a football or baseball team, go ahead.

Just know what you’re doing. There’s risks, and I’m not talking about just losing the money. I’m talking about losing everything: your home, your spouse, your family, your job, your self esteem, everything.

It may not happen to you; it might happen to you. Personally, I get a charge out of p*o*k*e*r, but I can walk away from it for days at a time. If you can’t, there’s a problem, and you need to recognize it.

But, I digress.

There’s no real issue with a dead pool: people have been doing it for centuries. It’s an old practice. It’s one of those things that people do, so get used to it.

People have been doing football and baseball pools for a long time, too, and no one complains about those.

Personally, I wish people that wish to regulate other’s behavior would just shut up and face the music rather than try to legislate morality, which — we learned in the 1930s — doesn’t work. It goes on, it goes around, it happens regardless of whether you want it to or not.

It’s time for Ohio to get on the stick.

For Castro, my money’s on August 28th, about 3:25 p.m.

(71.8 — 67.6 — 4.2)

I’m so glad I never used AOL.

I could never see the purpose in subscribing to a service that had to translate everything into other verbiage so that you had to learn two different names for the same thing, when the original name did just fine.

Not only that, but you had to pay more for AOL than almost any other ISP.

I always preferred my Internet raw: no middlemen, no translating services, no nothing. Just give me a browser and I’ll find what I find, thank you.

I’ll pay less for faster service, too (not to mention more polite customer service).

And I never trusted AOL, either. Too big. I have friends that have tried to cancel their service, only to have AOL offer them outrageous deals for them to stay. They made it virtually impossible to quit.

Horror stores I have heard even include continuing charges on their credit cards that went on for months after the service was actually cancelled.

None of this is new.

Now, AOL admits that it made a mistake by posting 20 million keyword searches from three months on their service.

Glorious.

I remember a while ago that a lot of folks got upset about the government asking Google to surrender their databased search results; now I think you can see why.

If you need advice about how to protect your privacy on the web, Wired published an excellent article back in January, with several more links for products, services, and tactics to protect yourself from prying eyes.

Button up.

I was fiddling around last night, looking for a couple of new twists for the site, and I couldn’t get over how hot it was — 94 degrees at the time — so I decided to find a weather plugin for WordPress.

I found WeatherIcon, a nifty, little doo-dad that takes up about 3 lines of code, is modifyable both through the WordPress Dash and your CSS file, and it displays weather information from whatever site you select.

In this case, it’s getting its information through METAR data from Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

It slows the page just a tad, though, which is something I’m not totally happy about; it’ll do for now, however.

So, as I write this, WeatherIcon is telling me that the current tempurature is 94 degrees, with a heat index of 105; the humidity is only listed at about 53%, which I know is incorrect: it’s actually more like 72%, according to the National Weather Service’s Cleveland reporting bureau — which is what all of the local media outlets use.

Otherwise, however, I like this new thingy; the only thing I might change is the icon style. We’ll see.

(71.8 — 65.4 — 6.4 — adjusted by WW)