Over the weekend I needed to charge my iPad as it had gotten down to about 5% battery life. Normally when I plug it into the computer the iPad screen shows that it is syncing, and when I go to iTunes on the computer I can see the device listed in the left-hand sidebar. Not this time. iPhoto started, since there are pictures on the iPad, but iTunes was ignorant of the iPad’s presence.
Over the next couple of days I tried several times to sync the iPad with no success. It charged okay, but it wouldn’t sync. My iPod Nano synced just fine however. Curious.
Several Google searches lead me to this, Device Not Recognized knowledge base article on the Apple Support site. After following all of the directions short of completely removing iTunes from my computer the iPad would still not synchronize. Completely removing iTunes seemed like a really drastic step, and one I was reluctant to try.
Today when Software Update indicated there was a new version of iTunes I thought maybe that would fix things. Unfortunately it did not. So this evening I followed all the steps in Removing iTunes from Mac OS X. When I got to the second half of the instructions, after restarting and emptying the trash, I discovered that instead of one copy of the com.apple.iTunes.plist, I had about two dozen copies, each with a slightly different number appended to the end of the file name. Obviously this plist had become corrupted and was the root of the problem.
Once all the files had be moved to the trash and then deleted I downloaded the newest version of iTunes and installed it. The moment of truth came when I started iTunes for the first time - would it be smart enough to recognize my existing library, playlists, ratings, and play counts. Yes, it was smart enough.
And even better, my iPad once again synchronizes with iTunes. I have no idea how things got broken, but I am glad they are working once again.
Last Saturday Sibylle’s brand new Toshiba laptop started acting funny. First would lock up anytime the computer went to sleep, and then it stopped recognizing USB devices. It also stopped recognizing SD Cards. Not good things.
My bag of Windows tricks has diminished as I don’t work on or use a Windows machine any more. We tried several things with no success, including using the most recent restore point. Thursday evening I called Toshiba support and worked with a very helpful and patient woman named Karen. She verified the problem and we tried a couple of things to fix the machine.
Deleting a registry file didn’t help, nor did running a Windows “fix it” routine downloaded from the Microsoft site. In the end she said our only option was to run the recovery process and reset the machine to its factory state. The problem with this option is that it means the drive will be formatted and all data on it lost. We bought her machine the last week of January so there isn’t a lot of new data on there, but we didn’t want to lose any of it.
Normally I’d plug a USB hard drive into her machine and back up files that way. Only the USB part of the Toshiba isn’t working. A quick survey of the files created or modified after the purchase date on her machine revealed a number of photos and videos that might be elsewhere on a SD Card or other computer, but wanting to be safe we wanted to back them up. The sum total of these files is 21 GB. Five DVDs worth. Hm. Fortunately we have a network drive and the network is still working on the Toshiba.
I started the proces of copying files to the network drive and we went to bed.
Friday morning the copying process had completed and I was able to verify that the files were safely on the network drive. However not from the Toshiba. This morning I was unable to view network attached devices from the Toshiba. Using another computer I verified that the copy operation had completed and I started the restore process. Instead of using the DVDs I had made (all 4 of them) the technician told me how to run a restore using the partition on the hard drive. By restarting (at least this model of Toshiba) while holding the zero key (0) down you can trigger the restore function. After saying yes to a dire warning about formatting the drive and losing all data contained on it, the process started. The Toshiba representative had warned me that based on hard drive size it could take 1 to 2 hours for this process to complete. I starte it about 6:15 am this morning and by 7:30 I was adding a new account to the machine.
By 7:45 the restore process had wrapped up and I was looking at a “factory fresh” Toshiba desktop again. Complete with BestBuy App. Since then the trial versions of Norton and Microsoft Office have been removed, along with the BestBuy App, and AVG Free AntiVirus was installed. Also, a fully licensed academic version of Microsoft Office has been installed, along with Dropbox.
Still left to accomplish is reinstalling Sibylle’s Kodak camera software, WordPerfect, and iTunes. Then we’ll copy her files and documents again.
The machine appears to be working normally now. USB drives and SD Cards are recognized. Network drives are visible and accessible. When put to sleep the machine doesn’t freeze anymore. While we may never know how something got corrupted, or indeed what exactly was corrupted, restoring the machine has solved the problem. I strongly suspect that a failed attempt to add a driver for the network drive was the issue. As long as we are able to work with that drive without installing Western Digital’s software, we will.
And, I’ll be setting up a backup program on her laptop to make a nightly copy of all her data so that in the future if there are problems we don’t have to worry about finding a way to get data off the computer before restoring it.
While I wasn’t pleased to have to jump through so many hoops to get her computer working again, I was pleased with how responsive Toshiba Support was. Karen knew her stuff and was able to lead me through the steps to try and fix Sibylle’s computer. I know I don’t have that kind of patience, so I am impressed when I am its recipient.
My little corner of the Internet is fifteen today. A quick whois lookup of zanshin.net shows that this domain was first registered at 05:00:00 GMT on 1996-02-20. I did have a personal site for about a year or so prior to having a domain. I think I was one of the first private domains my Internet provider had ever set up.
There have been a lot of bytes over the modem since then.
In September 2009 I wrote a lengthy how-to describing the process I followed installing PostgreSQL 8.x on my Mac running Snow Leopard. It was an interesting experience figuring out solutions to all the obstacles along the way. The posting is one of the most popular on my site, and it has generated several emails from people looking for help with their PostgreSQL installation.
As much fun as all of this has been I have wanted an easier way to set PostgreSQL up, particularly a way that avoided the entire dscl process of creating a new user id. With brew I think I’ve found a much easier process.
Homebrew, or brew for short, is billed as the missing package manager for Mac OS X. MacPorts and Fink are the other two, perhaps more established, players in this space. Go visit their site for more information and instructions on how to get brew up and running on your system.
As with any software installation process, you are proceeding at your own risk. Mucking around with package installers and things that live in the bowels of your file system are fine activities, but not for the uninitiated. Make a good backup and proceed with caution.
With brew installed it is simple to install PostgreSQL:
$ brew install postgresqlWhen I went to initialize my first database using the new PostgreSQL installation I received an error saying the the memory request could not be satisfied. After some Googling I found out I needed to change the settings on a couple for sysctl managed attributes. Specifically kern.sysv.shmmax and kern.sysv.shmall. Here’s what I changed mine to:
$ sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=13421772800
kern.sysv.shmmax: 4194304
sysctl: kern.sysv.shmmax: Operation not permitted
$ sudo !!
sudo sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=13421772800
Password:
kern.sysv.shmmax: 4194304 -> 13421772800
$ sudo sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall=13421772800
kern.sysv.shmall: 1024 -> 13421772800kern.sysv.shmmax=13421772800
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmni=32
kern.sysv.shmseg=8
kern.sysv.shmall=13421772800
There’s a construction crew making good use of today’s near 60º temperature working up the street. They are putting the stone facade on a new house four houses up the street from us. Call it five houses distance as there is an intervening street too. Like all construction crews they have a large, loud stereo going.
How loud?
Loud enough to hear, or rather feel, the incessant thump of the bass from the rap-crap they are listening to.
I will be so very glad when all the houses in this neighborhood are completed an the noise, chaos, large beeping vehicles, and mess are gone. In other words, “Get off my lawn.”
Updated: A call to the Riley County Police department has been made. They were courteous and helpful. A squad car is being sent to deal with the matter.
Less than a week after we installed Microsoft Office 2010 on my wife’s new Toshiba laptop it stopped working. Any time you tried to start Outlook and error dialog saying, “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook” would be displayed. No reason, no helpful hint, just cannot start.
After several days and many Google searches here is how I fixed the problem.
If you are having a similar problem, please proceed with caution. I give no guarantee that these steps will work for you. Make sure you have a good back up of your computer before proceeding as your computer may explode.
The short version is this - find the .pst file and remove it. This file contains the profile that Outlook uses and it has somehow become corrupted. Be warned that removing this file will wipe out your email if you are using POP instead of IMAP.
In my case, finding the location of the PST file used by Outlook was the hardest part of the ordeal. All of the knowledge base articles I found, and forum entries, et cetera, indicated I would find this file in the AppData directory under my wife’s user account. Only it wasn’t there. At first I didn’t even see the AppData directory; it wasn’t until someone at work clued me into Microsoft’s practice of hiding some files and directories from users to protect them from themselves that I was able to find it.
With the AppData directory visible I still couldn’t find the PST file. Nuts.
One forum entry suggested running the Mail applet from the Control Panel, which would allow me to switch to a new profile. Only the Mail applet produced a “Your system needs more memory or system resources. Close some windows and try again.” message. Unfortunately the only window open at the time was the Control Panel. Clearly something was broken.
Searching for that last message lead me to a page the explained how to run the Mail applet from Safe Mode. Once I did that I was able to see the location of the profile that was corrupted. Instead of being in AppData it was in Documents\Outlook Files. Rebooting to leave safe mode I was able move the offending PST file to the desktop and finally start Outlook.
Outlook objected to not having a profile, but once I created a new one (still in Documents\Outlook Files, and still called Outlook.pst) every thing was working again.
There has to be an easier way to make all of this work - especially when it stops working. The average home computer user is going to be utterly defeated by a dialog that only says, “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook.”
Reboot into Safe Mode. Do this by holding the F8 key down while the machine restarts.
Open the Run dialog by using the Windows-R keystroke combination.
Type “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\MLCFG32.CPL” (without the quotes). It is worth noting that I had to try both Program Files and Program Files (x86) to find the MLCFG32.CPL file.
In the resulting Mail control panel applet, look to see where your PST file is located.
Reboot to leave Safe Mode
Make a copy of the corrupted PST file, this is critical if you are using POP3 to get your mail. The PST locates your mail on your machine. If you delete this file you’ll lose all your mail.
Delete the corrupted PST file.
Start Outlook and when prompted, create a new profile. If you are using IMAP your account information should be there and your mail should start working again. If you are using POP you’ll have to import mail from the old profile that you copied in step 6.
Have a beverage.
Nothing to see here, move along.
As a software developer I am familiar with the concept of debugging new code. As a new home owner, by which I mean the owner of a brand new house, I am learning that construction has a debugging phase too.
Our house came with a one year warranty and I am now convinced this is so that we can see the house in action during each of the four seasons. So far we’ve tested the house in extreme cold and snow - and discovered that the insulation distribution in the attic isn’t quite correct. In the spring we’ll get to test it during rain storms and run off. Over the summer we’ll endure the 100º days of July and August, and next autumn we’ll see how it holds up against pollen and dust.
Throughout the year we’ll be stressing the stairs, floors, cabinets, lights, plumbing, doors and windows through normal daily use. Unlike software we can’t test it in a beta environment prior to actually using it. Houses go from development (construction) to production (people living in them) overnight. Of course this isn’t the first house ever built, nor is it the first house our builder created, so there is some expectation that it was done correctly. Still there will be a few bugs that need addressing.
It’ll always be a version 1.0.x house. Hopefully we won’t have to increment any more than the maintenance release portion of that number, e.g., 1.0.2 or 1.0.3. (Although if the shower leak is back we might have a minor release update to 1.1.0.)
Finish moving boxes from the garage to the basement.
Setup the new document scanner and start scanning untold reams of paper.
Find a better replacement for Microsoft Money than Quicken.
Research and buy shelves for paperback books, DVDs, and CDs.
Sort out wonky email issues with Sibylle’s laptop.
Sort out wonky kernal panic issues with Mark’s laptop (maybe Virtual Box related).
Take Cannondale bike to shop to have headset adjusted.
Exercise more.
Exercise at all.
Find time for ourselves to recharge our batteriers.
Sort through all the boxes in the basement and repack what we want and give away or throw away the rest.
Find the treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Yesterday, while returning Social Network at the nearby Redbox, I saw that Inception was available so I grabbed a copy of it. Talk about a mind-altering movie. Wow. This has the same kick as The Matrix did when it was brand new. And like The Matrix, this will take a re-watching or three to fully grasp and understand.
I also like that it had a hint of a Sting ending with the spinning top on the table. Did it wobble there at the end? Was it going to fall down, or was it going to keep spinning forever?
Oh, and Social Network was pretty good too. You almost feel sorry for Mark Zuckerburg by the end. Almost.