Inventive Rants Inventing, writing, business development and general rants about technology. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 3 0 51 1290

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Early 2007 24 iMac freeze. One source found. 2007-11-06 14:50:00 When I purchased my Early 2007 24 inch iMac, I also bought an external Western Digital MyBook Firewire 800 drive to keep a full backup on hand. Little did I know that this drive would cause me problems.A random freeze, usually while browsing in Safari, brought my whole system down. It began with the spinning beachball, and was sometimes associated with a hard drive click from inside my iMac.This resulted in a force restart, and many times caused directory damage. I did not think crash reporter put logs in my root directory HD/library/logs/crashreporter, but it does. Upon checking them, I found each and every file was named WDBMService_date-of-crash. Every single one.It had never dawned on me that some tiny little piece of software supplied by Western Digital would do so much damage. It was random, and about once a month.The piece of software is called WD Button Manager. It controls the blue LED light on the front of the hard drive. Removing it has not  made any difference that I c ...

Appreciate what you have 2007-11-06 00:42:00 ...

Installing Leopard on G4 eMac 2007-11-05 15:52:00 Installing Leopard OS X on the G4 1 Ghz eMac (1 Gig of RAM) went a little slower than the 24 inch iMac. Before installing, I repaired permissions, rebooted into single user mode (Apple S), and ran fsck -fy.Some people actually think that running the disk utility from the CD (while booted from the CD) is better than fsck. I have read, that some belive if you run from an external disk, the disk first aid can fix "the whole disk", whereas, they believe, fsck, cannot. Wrong.Sometimes, your machine may not boot from the CD. Fsck should be standard operating procedure.The eMac rebooted into the Leopard install, and told me it would take 2 hours and 53 minutes. After checking at the one hour mark, it said that it had 18 minutes left. When it said that there was one minute remaining, it took about 15 minutes more. You can open an active log window during the installation and see that there is activity.Only one major annoyance. Gmail status, although updated to 1.08, does not work on any of my ...

Apple to sell OS X Leopard to PC users soon. 2007-10-30 23:34:00 This is my guess anyway. Why?Microsoft sold about 60 million copies of Vista this year, which is more than the entire installed base of Apple. There will be more than 1 billion Windows users by the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, this includes the 40 million copies sold in the first 100 days of Vistas release.Steve Ballmer has stated that this means there will be more copies of WIndows running worldwide, than there are automobiles. Source.The thing I love about PC's are the games. The thing I love about my iMac is that I can play those games using a Cider port, or in Bootcamp, at full speed. Thing is, most people use PC's because they have become a mainstay in the business world. There are a few key applications that just don't make it to the Mac platform. Solidworks, AutoCAD as well as several other highly sophisticated 3D programs. Many accounting, tax, and property management programs are also unsupported on the Mac.My sister-in-law loves the Mac for internet browsing, Mail and ... Apple

How to find a good computer repair person. 2007-10-28 23:47:00 The CBC Marketplace show recently did a piece on Computer Geeks and similar computer tech service personnel and found that most of them were either dishonest or simply, not that knowledgeable. Big Surprise.I ran MRBACH PC for about a year doing the inhome service for people, but found that people just think computer repair people are crooks. It is true, most of them are. How do I know this?Well, most of the people I met always had this "tune up" story, about the last tech that worked on their computer. There was nothing wrong with their machine, they just needed the antiviral software updated and while they were "in there", they might as well do a "tune-up".Turns out a "tune up" is a can of compressed air to blow the dust out of the case and costs a couple of hundred bucks. Stop paying for that. It isn't a tuneup. Maybe your machine does need a cleaning, maybe the fans are clogged up, but let's not call it a tuneup. It's dusting.I am a computer geek. In fact, I did work on part of t ...

Nate Berkus talks shop on Oprah. Home Advantage Interiors in Carlisle Ontario. 2007-10-10 23:48:00 Oprah Winfrey had Nate Berkus on today discussing updating your home decor. Home Advantage Interiors offers the latest styles and fabrics. Maxwell, Robert Allen, Kravit and Joanne are among the many designer fabrics that Home Advantage offers.If you still have dusty,dried flower arrangements, wallpaper borders and pink frilly curtains, chances are you need to update your home. Let Home Advantage Interiors decorate your home from top to bottom. Re-upholster your furniture, update your paint colours and change your flooring. You'll be very happy with the end result and be proud to invite guests in.Home Advantage Interiors is located in Carlisle Ontario Canada and serves surrounding areas, such as , Oakville, Waterdown, Campbellville, Burlington and Milton.Contact HAI at (905)659-4668Visit Elaines blog here.↑ Grab this Headline AnimatorTechnorati Tags: oprah, winfrey, nate, berkus, home, decor, decorate, design, interior, drapery, carlisle, oakville, ontario, burlington, waterdown, ...

Snapshots on Inventive Rants 2007-09-23 12:05:00 Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.comI just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out. ...

Luciano Pavarotti 1935-2007 2007-09-06 00:17:00 Luciano Pavarotti died at the age of 71 on September 6, 2007.He will be missed. ...

Finally. Why some have trouble finding places on maps. 2007-08-26 23:43:00 I mean, uh, when you think about it, it, uh, makes so much sense.To be fair though->Blogged with Flock ...

Alone Without You by The Nightwatchman 2007-08-17 15:34:00 The brand new music video of..."Alone Without You"...by The Nightwatchman, as featured inthe closing credits of 'SiCKO'Technorati Tags: sicko, nightwatchman, video, michael, mooreBlogged with Flock ...

New iMacs, Intel and OS X. Crash. 2007-08-14 23:33:00 I have a couple of G4 Mac's in the house. I have never had one of them freeze. That is, I have had a program freeze on me, but I was able to force quit the application (even the finder) and restart my machine. With My Intel iMac (24 inch 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo), I have had a dozen complete system freezes over the last 8 months.Fifty percent of the time, it did damage to my hard drive directory. Twice, after restart, it caused a sibling link error. Diskwarrior was able to repair it once, the second time, I had to do an archive and install.I went so far as to erase and zero out the drive (assuming that it may remove a potential bad sector) and reinstall all of the software. I still managed to get a system wide freeze the other day. I had to hold the power button until the machine shutdown, and then I restarted. I ran fsck to check the disk, and surprisingly, I had no damage this time.I have checked the RAM, I doubt it's the processor. It isn't the hard drive either. I checked the firew ... Intel

Universal Healthcare. Why is this a problem? 2007-08-09 16:36:00 After watching Sicko, I finally understood what it must be like to be cared for by private health insurance. Then, I saw the Mitt Romney video on YouTube and couldn't imagine what it would be like to pay over $1000 a month for health insurance and still pay deductibles (copays). Here ya go,Waitresses are some of the hardest working people in the world, and here is someone that feels the way most of us do about politicians. They are rich, get everything for free, and at the end of the day get a government pay check. Sort of a Universal Employment plan they have going.Here in Canada, if you serve for 6 years as a politician, you get a full pension. The councilors in my city just voted to give themselves a raise. I mean, seriously, politicians have no idea what the real world is. Imagine telling your boss that you and the guys got together and decided that you needed a raise. Not 10 percent or 20 percent, but 30 percent. You had hired a consultant and he told you that other people were m ...

How to make your own Last Supper image 2007-08-01 14:00:00 I keep seeing this combined image of the Last Supper.Well, not this exact one, but the same idea. I remember doing this years ago when Photoshop could first do layers.In the early days of image editing, it was fun to take old pictures and play with them. Remember the stereogram pictures? For awhile it was popular to create artificial stereograms or 3D interpretations of art.I'm guessing this was the early to mid nineties for me. I always thought it was interesting to look for "clues" in old pictures by manipulating them in this way. I do remember others doing the same thing, so I don't know what the big deal is over this Slavisa Pesci, a computer analyst. His method of scanning the image of the Last Supper, printing it on transparent paper and then laying it over the original in reverse seems more like something from the 70's, than the--- whatever you call it now. Oh, early 21st century.A computer analyst? Why would a computer analyst print it on transparent paper and then place it ...

The V impeller 2007-07-29 17:36:00 About 10 years ago, I developed an small impeller that could be formed out of one piece of steel and used in 55 gallon drum mixers. It was well received as a slurry mixer in the semiconductor industry and rated as the most effective particle distribution impeller in the world. 99.995 percent solids suspension in 0.125 micron CMP slurry.Around the same time, I had also been working on gas dispersion ideas to solve the problem of pumping vast amounts of gas into a liquid without stalling out the pumping ability of the device. Aeration and gas dispersion devices are a delicate balance between pumping and bubbling. Too much gas, and you just stall the whole system.Of course, 10 years ago, it was difficult to sell technology that used significantly less power. It was also a time, when oilsand oil was still an expensive commodity. Not until $75 a barrel oil, did it become a profitable operation to get oil out of the oilsands. Some new breakthroughs in understanding the fluid flow,an update t ...

Jon Stewart live in Niagara Falls 2007-06-12 23:37:00 Jon Stewart came to Niagara Falls on June 1 & 2nd, and we managed to get some tickets at the last minute. It was a great show and Jon was very funny. My favourite part of the Daily Show is the first 5 minutes of Stewart. This concert was a real treat. One of the funniest and smartest. He is right though. I never thought about it. They built a casino right in front of a huge drop with a giant waterfall. That can't be good. technorati tags:Jon, Stewart, Fallsview, Casino, Niagara, Falls, Daily, Show, comedyBlogged with Flock ...