Days of the Week
Monday, December 1st, 2008 |Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Taco Tuesday, Wednesday Hump Day, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving Thursday. Saturday gets left out of the crowd.
Archive for the ‘WTF?’ Category
Leopard 10.5.5 – Blue Screen of Death
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 |Blue Screen of Death on a Mac?
I had my first major issue with my MacBook the other day. Before going to work, I shut down my computer instead of just closing it to sleep for the drive to work. When I got to work, I turned on my MacBook and after the Apple screen I saw a blue screen that didn’t look anything like this:
I gasped, “This is a Mac, there’s no blue screen of death!” After restarting the computer several times, I realized that I was not going to be able to get to the login screen and that I would be stuck staring at a blue screen all day. I asked my friend Dan (like I always do) for some advice on what to do. He suggested clearing the PRAM so we did, no luck. Because I hadn’t been using Time Machine, I used my Leopard disk and a 500 GB hard drive to make a copy of my hard drive to preserve my data and settings. This was a time intensive process but worked like magic.
After I had copied over all of my data, I reinstalled Leopard and then used the Migration Assistant to import all of my stuff back to the MacBook. The migration went smoothly and I was able to get to the login screen (no blue screen of death, w00t!). The problem at that point was that when I typed in my login password it told me that I had entered the wrong password. I was typing the correct password but I tried every password I have ever used for anything but to no avail. I ended finding an article on LifeHacker that showed me how to create an admin user from single-user mode and so that I could change my admin user account’s password. That worked like a charm.
6 hours and several evil thoughts later, I was up and running on my MacBook with everything the way it should be.
Lessons Learned
- Use Time Machine!
- Always have friends that are geekier than you are
I still have no idea why I was getting that blue screen of death.
Put It In The Bag
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 |Just a little nugget from my childhood…
Humphrey the Bear in one of my favorite cartoons EVER! I promise that this song will get in your head and you’ll be dancing around bumping your hindquarters into garbage cans all over the place, I’ve been doing it for years!
Radio Blurb
Thursday, June 12th, 2008 |My friend Robynn came by work and interviewed me for a piece she was doing for a local news radio station. This is one of those times where hearing the sound of your own voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard or pulling apart cotton balls, but I think that she did a great job!
Ahh, Skype Me!
Monday, February 11th, 2008 |I use Skype to video chat with non-Mac users (I just use iChat with other Mac-users) and for a long time I was singing Skype’s praises- the audio and video quality is good, lag isn’t a problem, and best of all, it’s free! But things have changed.
Lately, I’ve been getting all kinds of nasty spam through Skype and it really irks me because I have my privacy settings set to the max.
You need to understand that I only have 6 Skype contacts and that I have never published my Skype username anywhere. Somehow and some way my contact info was compromised and I get porn spam like crazy. Skype’s support page on the subject is absolutely worthless, here are their instructions for taking care of the spam issue:
People keep sending me spam messages or abusive calls, what can I do?
If you are getting chat messages or calls that you consider to be spam or abusive we suggest you use Skype’s built in privacy settings to filter out any unwanted communications.
You can select only to allow calls or chats from people in your Contacts list that you’ve authorized.
Select Tools -> Options -> Privacy
Check the box next to the option “Allow calls from only people I have shared my details with” and/or the box “Allow chats from only people I have shared my details with” and then save the changes.
Then random strangers and people not on your contact list cannot contact you anymore.
Well, I have done that and I still get spam like crazy. I’d like to keep my Skype username, but I’m considering creating another account, or looking in to other options.
Have you had issues with spam on Skype? Let me know.
My Response to the Writer’s Strike
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 |Come on, you guys are KILLING me! I just can’t take another week without a new episode of The Office. I mean seriously, what do you expect me to do? Watch American Idol? The Biggest Loser? I’d rather slit my wrists and do pushups in salt water!
Please settle your disputes, get your monies, and start pumping out new episodes of The Office.
What Happens in Vegas…
Monday, November 19th, 2007 |
We spent the weekend in Las Vegas and had tons of fun. We got home and realized that we didn’t take as many pictures as we had hoped we would’ve!
Sub Zero Ice Cream
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 |
The Scoop
My buddy Kirk told me about cryogenic ice cream today and I just had to try it. The basic idea is that they take a cream/sugar base and add flavoring and mix-in toppings in a bowl. Then they add liquid nitrogen to the mix which not only makes for a really cool cloud of coldness but also instantly freezes the cream mixture and, voila! you’ve got instant ice cream.
The Science
Liquid nitrogen is kept at right around -320 °F and all scientific resources consulted in my research agree that -320 °F is very very cold. When liquid nitrogen comes into contact with the deliciously creamy mixture in the bowl, the atoms in the cream are arranged into a pattern that vaguely resembles a solar system, a Rubix cube, an organized, repeating pattern of particles. Imagine what that stuff would do if it came into contact with your skin! The girl who prepared my cryogenic treat wasn’t wearing gloves or even those killer cool lab goggles from Chem 105.
The Taste Test
The first step in the zap-frozen ice cream creation per Sub Zero’s website is:
Step 1: Choose Low High or Medium Fat
How could a food product that let’s you choose your fat comfort/acceptance level NOT be delicious? Seriously one of the greatest inventions since 2% milk. Overall, I really enjoyed the ice cream. I got “High Fat” with fudge chocolate and malt flavoring with dark chocolate shavings as a mix-in. It was delicious and fun to eat and my 6 oz. cup only set me back $3.49. My tongue was a little bit raw afterward, minor frostbite I’m sure, but when my spoon hit the bottom of that cup I was wishing that I had bought more than half a cup of the stuff!
