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#268417 - 31/10/2005 11:57 Adventures in tech support for friends' machines
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
A few months ago, a friend of my wife bought herself a Firewire drive for her iMac (the original candy-colored model) and wanted my help getting everything set up. No big deal: I moved her home directory to the Firewire drive, and everything worked fine for months. Then, for no apparent reason, her home directory disappeared. It was like she had created a whole new account. She could still see the Firewire drive mounted and it still had all of her files, but her iTunes and iPhoto were empty.

Last night, she cooked dinner and I investigated. Turns out, some Firewire controllers are known to "disappear" on occasion. I downloaded a firmware upgrade from LaCie, so hopefully this problem won't happen again in the future. But then there was the damage control. Apparently, since I had earlier set her home directory to /Volumes/<external drive>/Users/<username>, but the drive wasn't actually there at one point, the Mac helpfully created the directory. Once the drive came back, its original mount point was taken, so it got assigned to /Volumes/<external drive> 1/, which you could only figure out from the command line. The Finder showed the external disk, exactly where it was supposed to be. It took me a while to realize what was going on because 'pwd' was telling me I was in the right place, but 'df' said I was on the internal hard drive.

I'm sure there's a moral to this story somewhere that somehow combines the value of computer nerds and good cooking with a sidebar on outsourcing and the importance of continuity of administration.

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#268418 - 31/10/2005 13:03 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: DWallach]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA


_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#268419 - 31/10/2005 15:00 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: pgrzelak]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
Oo. Paul, what's the inventory status of those spheres, by the way?
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#268420 - 31/10/2005 15:11 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: tfabris]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Pretty much sold out at this point. I have a few in my private reserve, but that is about it.
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#268421 - 31/10/2005 16:58 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: pgrzelak]
Ezekiel
pooh-bah

Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
I have a few around and would part with them for original price + shipping. Maybe 6, I'd have to look.

-Zeke
_________________________
WWFSMD?

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#268422 - 31/10/2005 17:06 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: pgrzelak]
loren
carpal tunnel

Registered: 23/08/2000
Posts: 3826
Loc: SLC, UT, USA
Not to thread hijack.. but I finally gave one to my friend who is an admin and he LOVES it. Says he's actually used it on support calls a few times. =D
_________________________
|| loren ||

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#268423 - 31/10/2005 17:16 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: loren]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Indeed. My apologies - I did not mean to hijack the thread. I was just offering a bit of a humorous reaction to the original tech support situation.

Glad everyone likes them, though...
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#268424 - 31/10/2005 18:16 Re: Adventures in tech support for friends' machines [Re: pgrzelak]
frog51
pooh-bah

Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
The one I keep at work has definitely helped to further my geek without a hope status
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock

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