life & mac.os.x 28 Apr 2006 11:10 pm

Too long gone …

Thanks to my loving audience for their patience! :-) I am back after some technical difficulties.

It all began around March eight, when my PowerBook started having bouts of narcolepsy while I was working on it, going to sleep on me at random times. Turns out it had a bad temp sensor under the trackpad. This sensor worked fine for the first one to three hours after power-up, then it would start going nuts, reporting temperature extremes between -140 F and 190 F. The PowerBook went to sleep to protect itself, thinking it was really overheating.

My PowerBook is the center of my computing life. And without it I am totally lost and unproductive at my personal stuff: my feed reader and blog post editor is there, along with my browser bookmarks, my iTunes library, and my podcast subscriptions. While I back up everything daily to an external drive, I don’t have a spare PowerBook to dump my backups on when my main PowerBook is gone. If I depended on the PowerBook more for work-related stuff, I would be totally SOL if it was gone.

Anyhow, things are sorta returning to normalcy. I’ve been moving my computing life to a dual booting Windows/Linux laptop I use for my work as an open source Java VM and open source Java Enterprise Edition frameworks expert.

The PowerBook returned and then was sent back: they wasted many weeks of my time ordering parts and what not, but they hadn’t repaired or replaced the failing temp sensor. :: sigh :: Here’s hoping it comes back soon, really repaired this time. The only consolation I have is, if they don’t get it fixed for a third time, I get a free new MacBook Pro.

Catch you all soon, I have other things to share …

4 Responses to “Too long gone …”

  1. on 29 Apr 2006 at 1:58 am 1.Mark Forman said …

    Yo mano. welcome Back to you and Mac book Pro to the land of the living. Almost sent the santeria priest out looking for you:)
    If your mac Book Pro has any babies,I’m willing to adopt:)

  2. on 29 Apr 2006 at 4:58 am 2.dreadpiratepj said …

    Thanks Mark! The santeria priest would have been appreciated, I am in a real funk without my Mac!

    As for the babies comment, I got a doozie for you:

    every morning, I wake up, walk over to the Windows laptop to check email while the coffee brews, and I get all nauseus, with something like morning sickness. ;-)

  3. on 29 Apr 2006 at 3:31 pm 3.Ken Nelson said …

    Welcome back, Dude! I knew you were still around, from the occasional Cabrera-lanche in the comments at Daves place and mine. :)

    I run my Powerbook more like a desktop, but mine still suffers from sleep disorders.

    Looking forward to “Hacks and Tricks” coming from here…

    -k-

  4. on 30 Apr 2006 at 2:08 am 4.dreadpiratepj said …

    Hi Ken,

    I too used my PowerBook as a desktop most of the time. It was only truly a laptop when I used to have a commute to work, or when I travelled to a conference.

    And yes, the “Hacks and Tricks” have been missing. I have to write up a hack to post real soon. My credibility as a tech blogger rides on it! :-D