Doctroid's Page of Scientific Mysteries

I've had my MacBook for about a year and a half now. I'm not big on extended warranties most of the time, but for a laptop? AppleCare. No question.

Until last week I'd used it twice.

Once a DVD (from the library, and due soon!) got stuck in the DVD drive and wouldn't eject. AppleCare phone guy talked me through coaxing it out.

Another time (just a couple weeks ago, I mentioned it here) the power adapter seemed to stop working. AppleCare phone guy had me reset the power system and all was back to normal.

Last Tuesday my MacBook abruptly froze up, and wouldn't restart from the hard drive. I rebooted from the install CD and ran Disk Utility: all signs pointed to a hard drive crash.

Wednesday morning I called AppleCare. Phone guy had me check a few things and then confirmed my diagnosis. He said to take it to the local Apple Store, have a good holiday, bye.

What he didn't do, and should have:

• Tell me I would need an appointment at the Apple Store


• Offer to make the appointment for me


• Give me a confirmation number

All of which I did not find out about until I arrived at the Apple Store, Kenny in tow, to be told they couldn't help me that day. No appointment slots left. I could come back Friday. Black Friday, at the Apple Store, in the middle of the biggest mall in town half of whose parking lot is gone due to construction. I implied that this was unlikely.

After the fourth or fifth time I told them the phone guy had not given me the above information which, they said, all phone support personnel are required and trained to do, the person I was talking to (who was very nice about it) got on line for a minute, checked in back, and then said they could take care of me. I signed the form, handed over the laptop, and left. They sent it off to, apparently, Tennessee.

FedEx attempted to deliver the laptop Monday, though (partly due to my own screwup) they didn't get my signature for delivery until today. Yep, dropped it off the day before Thanksgiving and it was back the Monday after. I'm letting it get up to room temp, and then I'll start restoring accounts, applications, and files.

Addendum: It says here:

The following services and/or replacement parts were used to service your product.
655-1312 DA TOSH TAURUS-B SATA 60GB AH1
603-9857 ASSY, BEZEL, M42
605-0994 SVC TOP CASE M42 W
630-7690 PCB, MLB, 1.83GHZ DC, SMS/KION
815-9189 M42 Battery Transfer Board Cli
607-0199 ASSY,HEATSING,M42(1.0mmConnect
631-0275 BATT CONN ASSY
016-0028 RESTORE:MAC OS

If I'm interpreting this right, it looks like they replaced not only the hard drive but the motherboard, about half the case, and a few other assorted parts. The case does look decidedly fresher.

Also, just yesterday I found out about this. I don't know if my drive was one of the affected ones.

Yesterday my MacBook's power adaptor seemed to die. No light, and the battery wasn't charging.

This morning I called AppleCare, and they suggested doing a reset of the laptop's power system. (Unplug it, remove the battery, hold the power button down 5 seconds.) Now things are working again.

So now you don't have to call AppleCare if this happens to you.

So the MacBook that has not been released yet and that Amazon will not start shipping until June 15 arrived from Amazon yesterday. It's the base model, in white, with DVD/CD-RW and 60 GB hard drive.

I like the heck out of it so far.

To touch on the touchiest first, the glossy display which has provoked much strong reaction is very nice. I'd gone to our local Apple Store to see one, before placing my order, and found that the reflections were noticeable but not, to my mind, horrible, and that A-B comparison with a MacBook Pro's matte screen made it obvious how much more bright and sharp it is.

I've now found that in my office, which in comparison with the Apple Store is less brightly lit and has different lighting angles, the reflections usually are barely noticeable. At times I had to make a real effort to see them at all.

(That's when the display is bright. When it dims for energy savings, the screen becomes a low-quality mirror.)

The also-somewhat-contentious keyboard also seems fine, though the arrow keys' inverted T is a bit squashed for my taste. I was worried, also, that the trackpad might be too big, but I'm having no trouble with it. The two-fingered scrolling feature is very cool.

Speaking of cool or its lack (how's that for a painfully goofy segue? I should write for TV news), the MacBook does get fairly warm in use, but I wouldn't say unreasonably so. Of course the only laptops I've used much have been much older, slower ones, so I have no real basis for a comparison. I did check and found no plastic strip covering the rear vent.

The MacBook ships with something like 25 GB already on the disk, and when I let the Setup Assistant transfer my files from my iMac more than 10 more GB got gobbled up. Mostly from pictures and music, I think. Some weeding will be called for.

I've installed Firefox, Xcode Tools, X11, and OpenOffice (the experimental MacIntel version; I haven't stress tested it but it looks like it works at some level). I'll do Fink soon -- which also has a beta-ish, possibly alpha-ish, MacIntel version. Maybe after the aforementioned weeding.

One problem: It doesn't go to sleep when closed, nor wake when opened -- and I haven't succeeded in making it sleep using the remote control, either. I've read online that some people have had this problem and have fixed it, I think by some reset incantation. I'll need to find that information again.

I spoke today to a couple of Indian guys who answer Amazon's phone about why my Apple MacBook MA254LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive)- White is still showing a delivery estimate of July 26.

They assured me this product has not been released yet and will not be available until mid June.

I pointed them to this.

They seemed surprised.

Maybe they're only shipping to Attlahnta.

Update: Amazon still says July 26 for the delivery estimate, but the status has changed to "Shipping Soon".

Looks like the next BMM practice won't be until April 2.

I went to Binghamton early Saturday to go to the annual tent sale at the Eureka Camping Center factory outlet store. I bought a tent made by Eureka for Galyan's, a chain which has since bought out by Dick's Sporting Goods leaving the Galyan's tents orphaned. The tent I bought was not entirely dissimilar to the Eureka Apex 2XT which I've seen with fiberglass poles for about $80 and up... I got the Galyan's version with aluminum poles as a B-class second for about $40. That'll be Kenny's tent at Old Songs this year, and maybe mine on some occasions if I ever need a lighter weight tent than the Eureka Equinox I bought last year. And I guess this is the end of the line for my two old North Face tents, which served me well for some years but are past their Best By dates.

I also bought a stake mallet/puller -- the old claw hammer with the screw hook in the handle was OK but flawed -- and some stakes and parachute cord. All for under $65.

Then on to BMM practice, attended not only by Dave Sullivan from Vermont, but by John Bromka for the first time in, he says, about ten years. We did one more Ducklington style dance -- Saturday Night -- and reviewed several others before retiring to Frank and Roberta's for homemade pizza and video of the Bampton and Chipping Campden teams.

Yesterday's highlight: Grocery shopping at P&C. I'm as aware as the next guy what a scam the "shopper's card discounts" usually are, but the fact is P&C is the best grocery store near us so either you use their card or you pay too much or you go to an inferior store. Anyway, this week they have some pretty remarkable sale prices including 2-for-1 deals on a lot of meat and seafood; I ended up spending about $195, way over the usual groceries budget, but on paper I saved $91. Freezer's restocked!

And we did some cleaning in the back room. I discovered my old old beige G3 Mac which has sat mostly unused for two and a half years no longer turns on. Maybe someone will want it free for parts. Or maybe I'll have to learn how to dispose of computers in Oswego County.

I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that the rumors -- some of the rumors, anyway -- were wrong; Apple is not introducing an Intel-powered iBook, yet. Instead there's a pro level replacement for the PowerBook (the new name: MacBook Pro) and, big surprise to me at least, an Intel iMac (still iMac). Either of which I'm happy to covet, but... last month en route to Virginia I dropped my laptop, an ancient ThinkPad 600 running Linux. Not intentionally. As I told my wife at the time, if I were going to do that intentionally, it would've been on the way home. Anyway, I was kind of hoping to have to decide between buying an Intel iBook or a discounted PowerPC iBook early this year, even though the ThinkPad is back up and running after I replaced its gargantuan 4 GB hard drive with an even more fearsome 6 GB one I picked up on eBay for $30. I can't justify $2000 for a MacBook Pro, though; not for my needs.

But Steve says the whole Mac line will go Intel this year. (Hmm, by analogy, will the new name for the PowerMac be MacMac Pro?) So I'll have my chance to spend money later on.

By the way, I really, really like the tag line on today's Apple web site: "What's an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it's ever done in a PC."

When I use Linux Firefox go to look at web pages that use Greek letters (and other such "symbols", I guess), e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukawa_interaction, I get... well, something else, I don't know what, but it's not Greek letters:

Same thing if I use Mozilla. Doesn't seem to matter what prefs I set for font or character encoding. If I look at the same page using Konqueror, though, I get the proper Greek letters. What's the fix?

Best Linux box EVAR.

Paraphrasing Wikipedia:

Big cat refers to the medium-to-large wild felids... The term is used to distinguish these large felids from the domestic cat and other smaller felidae species. One area of distinction is that big cats can roar, but cannot purr whilst inhaling, only while exhaling. (The cheetah is an exception, being able to make both sounds.)

"Big cat" species:

Genus Panthera:

• Lion
• Tiger
• Leopard
• Jaguar

Others often thought to be "big cats"...

• Snow Leopard
• Cheetah
• Lynx (including the Bobcat)
• Ocelot
• Puma (other names: catamount, cougar, mountain lion, painted cat, panther)

and elsewhere:

The word Panther has several meanings:

• Any big cat with the condition known as melanism (causing black fur)...
• Any big cat from the genus Panthera...

OK. So 'Panther' was a somewhat silly name for Mac OS X 10.3, since a 'Jaguar' (10.2) is a panther, as is a 'Tiger' (10.4).

But that's the past, and we must consider the future. 'Lion' is an obvious candidate for an upcoming OS X version name. I suppose 'Leopard' might be, too, though I for one always get leopards and jaguars confused. And, too, it seems to me there's been some sort of attempt to progress upward -- tigers being thought of, at least by me, as more powerful than panthers (averaged over panther species, anyway) and jaguars. After 'Tiger', anything but 'Lion' seems a step back. But then what? Ocelot? Cougar? Bobcat?

No, I'm afraid the long-term nickname prospects do not look promising. They should've started with 'Tabby' and 'Maine Coon', and worked up from there.

(And what do you do after 'Longhorn'? 'Holstein'?)

I have a new computer at work, a Dell Optiplex GX280. No great powerhouse, but sufficient for what I need.

Today I installed Scientific Linux 3.0.4 on it. This is a RHEL clone, put together by some high energy physics laboratory people. As their web site shows, I was not the first to install it on a GX280, and I had similar success -- video is VESA, other than that no difficulties.

I kept WindowsXP on the disk and set up a dual boot... with Linux the default, of course. As for partitioning, well... wanting to sully myself with Windows as little as possible, I tried booting from a Knoppix 3.7 live CD. This didn't work. The default boot, with kernel 2.4x, didn't recognize the SATA hard drive, and booting with kernel 2.6x just hung. There may be a workaround, but I just took the advice of M Otis Beard and tried using Kanotix 2005-01, a Knoppix variant. That worked well -- until I tried running QtParted to shrink the Windows NTFS partition. It wouldn't cooperate. I finally gave up, went back to Windows, and did it with PartitionMagic. Well, at least I now have a couple live Linux CDs in case I need them.

Tonight, for the heck of it, I installed Scientific Linux -- in a much more stripped down form, given the massive 4 GB disk -- on my old ThinkPad 600 laptop. Once again it went fine. No sound, but that's nothing new -- I hear it's possible to get sound support for the TP600 in Linux, but it involves sacrificing a goat and reciting Kant backwards while doing handstands, or something. Anyway, I've never done it.

A Microsoft security specialist explains that people who use open source software do so in order to focus malware damage on Windows users.

Well, of course! How could I not have realized this?

There's absolutely no other possible explanation for open source.

Actual quote:

Keppelmeyer claims that the authors of malicious software use open source browsers to protect themselves from their creations. While Keppelmeyer says "not all open source users are necessarily creating malicious software", all who adopt it for regular use are changing the arena in which attacks are carried out.

All sorts of blather about my email setup:

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