Category: Geekery

Ok, that was iPod number 5, bring on number 6

So my replacement iPod arrived yesterday while I was at work. First thing when I get home, I plug it in and start updating it. But as it’s loading 4,000 songs, after two or three hours I noticed that I accidentally selected the Punk playlist instead of the Classical one to auto update on it, and I wanted Classical this time. So I attempt to change it, first by changing the iPod settings in iTunes, then by selecting “Update iPod”, and finally by ejecting it. Oh, I should mention that by this point, the iPod is scorching hot to the touch. By this time, though, iTunes is not responding, so I attempt a “Force Quit”. It won’t quit. I try a few more times. Still no luck. I try ejecting the iPod icon on the Finder, and now the Finder isn’t responding and won’t do a “Force Restart”. Then I notice that the clock on the menu bar hasn’t updated since I started loading the iPod. Time for drastic measures, I think, and restart the computer.

When it restarts, iTunes comes up but doesn’t see the iPod, and the iPod is display an icon of a folder with an exclamation mark. I try using iPod Updater to “Restore” the software. Then iTunes says that my iPod software has to be updated to 1.3 and launches the iPod updater again (I have several different versions of the iPod Updater on my system, and I guess I didn’t use the most recent one when I did the “Restore”). It tells me that the update is complete and to unplug and replug the iPod to continue, and when I do it tells me that it needs to update to 1.3, and then that the update is complete, and to unplug and replug the iPod to continue. Somewhere along the way iTunes then tells me that there is a 1.4 update available, and I go to the Apple web site to download the latest updater (and I delete all the other updaters), which tells me that it’s installing 1.5. I do so, and that leads to another cycle of iTunes and Finder hangs. I try using the “Restore” option in the iPod Updater again, with no different results, but eventually it tells me that it’s loading songs, and then after loading one song and starting on the other, iTunes and the Finder hang again.

I go through a bunch of different combinations of software restores, reboots and plugging it in with or without iTunes or the iPod Updater already started. Eventually I’m at the situation I’m at now, where the computer won’t see the iPod at all, and the iPod is showing a new icon, that of a disk with an exclamation point.

You know, this is the 4th time that Apple has send me a faulty iPod if you count the time they sent me back iPod #3 saying there was nothing wrong with it and I sent it back because they hadn’t read my letter on how to reproduce the problem. I don’t know if they’re making any money off of this purchase, but I suspect that it’s a major profit center for DHL.

I’m da man, baby

Our “feature players” are computers with no keyboard, no screen, just a tiny little 4 line dot matrix display with a few touch buttons. One of our sales and demo sites, in China, had a little problem – due to a bug in the version of software they’re still running they desparately need to rename a file before tomorrow morning. And in order to connect a keyboard and screen, or even a network cable so they could ssh in, they’d have to remove it from a rack and move it out of the projection booth. Don’t ask me why.

There were around 5 people at work trying to solve this problem, including my supervisor, the guy who signs the POs to pay us contractors, and two other developers. They called me into the meeting to discuss it at 4:00pm. At 4:15 I’d finished explaining how I’d solve it. At 4:30 I had a first burn of a CD that would solve the problem. At 5:00pm I’d fixed a couple of strange little problems with the first two cuts at it, and had an ISO that they could email to the site in China, have them burn it, and put it in the DVD drive and fix their problem.

(Technical details follow, you might want to skip this part)
Continue reading “I’m da man, baby”

I want my iPod back

It’s been 6 days since I sent my iPod in. I haven’t killed my cow orker in the next cubicle yet, but I’m feeling a tiny bit stabby. The Apple (lack-of-)support site has a status of “Dispatch Sent”, whatever that means. The Repair Status Details page says that they received it on the 19th, and nothing further. How long does it take them to charge it up, hit “play”, and look 3 hours later and see that it’s not playing any more?

Progress, of a sort.

I fixed yesterday’s problems with the machine locking up every time I tried to burn a DVD by opening up the case and reseating all the cards and cables. Yeah!

Last night I worked on setting up a new computer for the flying club’s ops center. The old one started freezing up and dying about a month ago, and so I took it home to work on, and then never had time to work on it because of the move. Even after reseating everything and cleaning, it still freezes up after a few minutes of operation – it continues to work and the screen refreshes, but it no longer responds to the keyboard and mouse. A club member donated a machine which was even slower than the original (400MHz versus 550MHz) and has less ram (384Mb versus 512Mb). But it’s adequate. I installed Morphix Linux on it, which probably isn’t the best choice but it uses XFCE4 as its user interface unlike most small Linuxes that use IceWM or Blackbox or Fluxbox, which look like somebody with really bad colour sense and latent depression tried to copy the worst features of Windows 95. XFCE4 uses a Mac OS X-like application dock, and uses bright pastel shades so that it looks like something out of this century. The ~/Desktop/Autostart directory contains a script to start up Firefox with a special home page with some links that I find useful.

I stripped the stuff that users shouldn’t be doing off the menu bar, and set it up in /etc/init.d/xstart so that when a user logs out, the user’s home directory is blown away and re-copied from a read-only file system “safe”, and the display starts again. That way nobody has to worry about any of their web cookies, passwords or other cruft being left behind. And because it’s Linux, I don’t have to worry about them installing stuff or getting viruses or spyware.