by: George Starcher, Associate Editor

Well, let me tell ya.  I had some fun today.  First my day started off ok.  I had a dentist appointment today so I started early by logging into work from remote to do a few things.  It didn’t make sense to drive 30 mins into my office and back again in time for my appointment.  Especially at today’s gas prices.  All in all everything was going ok, then I noticed my wife’s mac (my old iMac G5) was not on.  I turned it back on and man it took some time to boot.  An unusually long time.  Then I find it does not see the attached firewire drive used for her Time Machine backup.  Nor does it see the network.  All that in time to go get a crown put in at the dentist.

I come back home to get back to stuff for work and find my Internet is out.  I did the reboot chicken dance and no joy.  Partial connection with Comcast but it never quite comes up.  So I go to look at the web page of my Motorola cable modem.  Of course you cannot view this on a mac.  You have to use…  wait for it…. Internet Explorer.  Good thing I have VMWare fusion with an XP VM ready.  A call to comcast and I get one of the signs the world is indeed ending.  I get a tech who listened to what I said and simply said a tech would call me back.  No hour long hoops to jump through.  Now for the ending of the world… The tech calls me in 5 minutes and says he will be here in 30 after I read him the signal data from the cable modem web page.  He was here in 20.   He had me fixed up in 15 minutes.  Some loose connections and tarnished connectors.  He replaced them and I was back up.  At least I fixed an emergency issue at work using my Sprint network card while I waited on the Comcast tech to show up and fix the signal issue.

THEN it gets better.  My linksys with ddWRT firmware starts dropping out.   Most likely it is interference from neighbors on the same channel.  And a linksys is not the strongest wireless unit in the world.  Well I had a new Extreme N router I bought with my birthday gift card from my mom.   And this no wireless thing was cramping my style in staying connected to work.  I quickly swapped out my old Extreme N to the new one, giving me gig wired connections for things like my Intel iMac and Xbox360.  I then reset my old Extreme N (10/100 wired) to take the place of my linksys.  That put me back in business to finish my issues for work.  The reason for the two Extremes is one provides my N-5GHz radio wireless network.  The other my N/G 2.4GHz network for my Wii, iPod Touch and PowerBook.  The plus side?  At least for me, revenge on my RF jamming neighbors.  Now I have the big bad Apple radio on N on the 2.4Mhz band. =)  I doubt *MY* connection will drop any more.  Can’t say much for theirs though.

After dinner tonight I decided to take a deep breath and trouble shoot my wife’s iMac G5 some more.  I plug the external Time Machine drive onto my PowerBook and check the disk.  At least it is ok and has all her data, itunes etc on it.  No file system errors either.  BUT I find no matter what I do, the network cable won’t connect.  It doesn’t see the internal Extreme wireless card.  I even tried booting the mac in firewire disk (Target) mode.  My PowerBook would never see it.

So a completely fun day of playing tech support across the board. With the joy of a new crown at the same time.

Now to see when the Genius Bar can take the iMac for a potential motherboard replacement.  I believe the AppleCare has not run out on it yet.  If not, then this will be the second motherboard it has saved me from.  Well worth the initial minor cost of the AppleCare itself.  Otherwise I’ll have to get her a mac mini and restore from her Time Machine drive.  Makes me feel better to know Adam Christianson already proved out that process for me.  Wish me luck.