I took the Macbook Pro in for a second visit to the local Apple Store’s Genius Bar on Friday night. Much busier this time around (apparently mid-day visits are a better bet). After a good wait I finally got called up for a seat at the bar. I explained to the Apple tech guy what the issue was and what had been done on the previous visit.

As an aside, let me say here that I have nothing but respect for these guys. Especially after watching all the attractive yet technically ignorant people that jumped in front of line and pestered them with iPod and iPhone questions. These guys handle it all with great professionalism and calm. And best of all, they never seem to start the conversation assuming they’re talking to a dumbass. I really doubt I could do the same.

So after the previous visit’s disk repair, PRAM and SMC reset, the proposal this time was to do an Archive and Install of the Mac OS X. They offered to do it there in the store and make sure it was up and running before I left, which they did (the Netboot install went pretty quickly). They also promised to replace the Macbook Pro if this didn’t fix it (assuming it was a stock configuration and it is). I was not hopeful that the reinstall would fix it, but kept my doubts to myself and said I was more than willing to try whatever they thought might work.

But, no, this didn’t fix it.

I mostly stayed off of the laptop over the weekend, too busy with other stuff. I briefly popped it open Saturday to see if I could duplicate the problem and all seemed well then. I then left it plugged in but asleep for the rest of Sunday before getting back to work on it this morning. Immediately I knew the display problems were back by the telltale flashes as it tried to render the Apple home page and further in the scrollbar of Twitterific. Playing around a little bit shows there has been absolutely no change in behavior of this issue, still seeing display corruption of Webkit views, slow redraws and occasional misdraws of list views and flashing on playing video.

There seems to be a lot of activity on the Apple Support discussion forums about this issue, but I won’t pretend to know how widespread of an issue it really is. I’m sure something like this always seems more widespread to the people who are experiencing it. That’s just the way humans work: problems affecting us are magnified, while those affecting others are minimized. In any case, I hope it isn’t a universal issue with all recent Macbook Pros and not tied to the NVIDIA GPU issues. I suspect it might be, but I really have nothing to base this on. NVIDIA certainly seems to be denying the problem is really as big an issue as has been rumored (see the recent ArsTechnica article from which the screenshot above was taken).

So far I have no complaints with the way Apple is handling this. Again, nothing but professional tech support people that seem to really want to help and I’m still hopeful that they can…

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After much research and ridiculous amounts of indecision, I finally upgraded my old 12″ Powerbook to a bright shiny new (well almost, more on this in a sec) 15″ Macbook Pro. The FedEx man delivered just under a month ago, and I quickly moved over files and applications. Much geeky happiness ensued…

When I shop, I tend to go for the bargains. This is hard to do on Mac’s but they do exist if you’re willing to get an older model or a refurbished unit. Now, I’ve been getting refurbs of things for years (stereos, VCRs, TVs, printers) and had not yet had a problem, so saving several hundred on a current model laptop seemed like a no-brainer. This enabled me to get a little more than I would’ve been able to afford normally, so instead of a 2.4Ghz new laptop, I was able to get a 2.5Ghz with better graphics and bigger HD for about the same price.

Then about two weeks ago the glitch began. The video card began to fail to fully redraw portions of windows and views. This is most apparent when scrolling a window and seems to occur most visibly on views that are WebKit views (like Safari, or the store view in iTunes). It’s not limited to these (I’ve seen it in list views as well), but I suspect I see it most in these because this is where one would most easily notice a redraw issue.

This is what the view corruption looks like on a fairly uncluttered page layout (Favrd):

And here is an example on a more dense layout (NY Times):

Most amusingly, here it is on the Apple main page (note the repeated links and text in the middle):

And for good measure, here it is in a list-type view:

Another symptom of this is some pretty extreme white flashing when viewing video (mostly on web pages) and also extremely slow rendering and flashing when displaying web pages with background images.

The first thing I did was try to figure out when this happened and see if I could make it stop by myself (muttering please stop, please stop)…

It was quickly apparent that it happens only on battery and mostly after the laptop’s gone to sleep (i.e. the lid closed but not powered down) and then opened up again. And it doesn’t happen at all when it’s plugged in.

So, I could work around it if it was a desktop (and thus always plugged in). Unfortunately, there was a reason I paid a premium for a laptop and that was so I could work unplugged and anywhere I chose to sit. And no, I don’t want to carry my cord around with me wherever I go. This things got pretty nice battery life (especially compared to the old Powerbook) and I’d like to take advantage of it.

Researching this online turns up several mentions of the same problem, some stretching back into Feb. of 2008. There are a couple of articles about this, for example this one at ArsTechnica, here at APC Magazine and this one at Macsimum News. More here at AppleInsider. And more here, here, and here… There is also much discussion on Apple’s support forums of this problem. The point of all this is that it is pretty well documented that this problem exists. There’s some recent speculation that the problem is related to the newly announced Nvidia GPU chipset problem, though no confirmation of this exists and Apple is, of course, keeping mum. My laptop has an Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT with 512mb of VRAM.

After trying a few of the things others had suggested online and failing to fix it, I took my laptop into the Apple Store’s Genius Bar. I had little faith that this approach would work but was willing to try.

I was easily able to demonstrate the issue to the technician and he immediately tried a couple of things to see if these would fix it. These are sort of standby fixes for just about every Apple laptop hardware problem, reset the PRAM and failing that reset the SMC. He also did a Disk Repair to see if anything was amiss there. All was clean on the repair (I’d already tried this myself of course) and the PRAM reset did nothing (also tried this). The SMC reset, on the other hand, seemed to do the trick. The problem went away despite all efforts to duplicate it again. Although I was a bit dubious, I was also hopeful and left tentatively satisfied.

About 22 hours after my visit, the problem was thoroughly back, making the use of this otherwise incredible machine a serious exercise in frustration. Maybe it was a mistake to get a refurb, but I suspect based on the forums that there was a good chance of seeing this with a brand new machine as well. I’d also guess that Macbook Pro refurbs are a seriously bad bet at the moment.

In any case, this won’t work as it is… so back to the Apple Store we go…

UPDATE: Last visit and resolution described here, and replacement discussed in this post…

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I have no idea what these are but they’re freaky. They’re very small (less than a .75cm across probably) and start out as slightly fuzzy spheres with white centers. You can see two of these in this picture. Seems that eventually the sphere opens leaving the little shells with black “seeds” behind… These are in the sunny front yard. In the more shaded backyard are literally hundreds of fucking mushrooms…

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Silktree leaves…

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Fun with moths…

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From Newsweek’s article on their latest poll showing Obama leading McCain nationally by 51% to 36%:

“Barack finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton. With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country’s direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that.”

Very early but still stunningly positive poll news for Obama…

Dave Winer is keeping up with all of this political news via his site NewsJunk – highly recommended. You can also get the latest by following newsjunkies on Twitter.

(Via Dave Winer’s Scripting News and NewsJunk sites.)

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Great video… On YouTube here, or see it embedded below (click Read More)…

(via Michelle Greer on Twitter)

[Read more →]

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From PZ Myers’ Pharyngula blog – Bad news from Louisiana on a new bill in Louisiana that allows teachers to supplement science text books with added religious or other material on evolution, global warming, etc. Note that the bill is couched in all sorts of language about free expression and exposure to controversial ideas.

“Remember that crazy teacher with the weird ideas you had back in 8th grade? Now he would be encouraged to bring in bible tracts, anti-abortion screeds, and puff-pieces by right wing editorialists decrying climate change as a communist plot, all in order to balance the teaching of that darned evidence-based biology and earth science stuff.

Note also that this bill, the ‘Louisiana Science Education Act’, was introduced by a Democrat (Ben Nevers, the ignorant pissant) and was approved 94-3.

All I can think is that ‘Louisiana Science’ must be some kind of polite euphemism for ‘bugfuck crazy stupidity’.”

This is from the same state whose governor (and possible Republican VP candidate), Bobby Jindal, claims to have taken part in an exorcism and also cured cancer.

(Via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed.)

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It’s been about 6 months since I was kicked out of my lovely cubicle and forced to work from home. The reasons for this are obscure and really not worth sharing, but suffice it to say I was initially a bit ambivalent about this turn of events. Not that I didn’t look forward to working from home, but there are some negatives that I’d already experienced in past bouts of this kinda thing. Nonetheless, 6 months later I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. Here’s some tips that might help others adjust as well.

1. Don’t expect to get more done. You won’t, at least not at first. Sure you won’t have as many idiotic conversations about what was on TV last night, but you will have many more distractions then you are used to and these will get to you if you’re not ready for them. So until you know what you’re reaction will be, you would do well to stay away from TV’s, social networking sites and other potential wastes of time. Eventually, you’ll be able to handle these in small quantities but not at first. And keep in mind that those people in the office who constantly interrupted you in person will (unfortunately) not forget you exist. They’ll just interrupt you by phone and email instead. Eventually, you will get more done, but you’ll have to use the same strategies you would have used at work to make sure this happens – turn off the phone, stop checking email.

2. Give in and do some of the crap your commuting spouse is expecting you to do while you’re at home. Yes, you’re supposed to be working during the day while he/she is at their ugly office. It doesn’t matter. They will still expect you to put a wash on or do the dishes and simply will not understand how you could possibly be so busy that you couldn’t have taken a 10 minute break to do this. No matter how much you try to make them understand. They especially will not understand why you would not want to do put on a wash on your 10 minute break. Just do it. You’ll be happier and they will think positive thoughts about you (or at least not negative ones).

3. Go into the office every once in a while. But when you do this, put on clothes. Decent clothes. Not the beer and coffee stained T-shirt you’ve been wearing all week. And not the smelly Tevas. You want them to remember you still exist but in a positive way, not think that you’re a slack prick sitting at home in their underwear all day. Even if you are, you need to manage your image a little here. It’s important.

4. Don’t drink beer all day. Yes, this one seems obvious, but believe me it can be a productivity sucker… But seriously, when talking to your commuting co-workers, don’t even joke about all the wonderful things you can now do from home that they can’t do in the cube-farm. They’ll hate you and seek to kill you. When they call and ask if they’re interrupting anything don’t tell them you were just sitting on the back porch having a drink and gazing at the sky. They hate that shit. And, when they complain about the traffic they hit coming in that morning, resist the urge to jokingly commiserate and say the traffic heading up the stairs from your kitchen to your office was deadly. They will not find this anywhere near as amusing as you do.

5. Work like you want to work. This one is harder than it seems and takes some practice. Some people advise home workers to get all dressed as if going to work and to set aside a permanent office area to work from. The concept is you’ll be able to make the mental switch from home to work properly this way. Fuck that. Don’t do it. Work however you want to work, and in whatever way you can get your stuff done most effectively. You are free of all that other office convention crap, why would you try to keep living that way? If you want to work in your underwear go ahead (except if you’ll be doing video chats/conferences, but even then you rarely need the pants). If you want to blast bad 80’s metal out your speakers while you work, do it. Who cares? It’s no longer about what other people think is best, it’s about what works best for you. And keep in mind it can change on a daily basis. Some days skip the breakfast and the shower and just jump right in for a couple of hours. Some days work on your back deck if you want. Work at the kitchen table. Take calls on the toilet. Wear a kilt. Or a sun dress. Or your Pjs. Whatever it is that works for you (and doesn’t hurt others), do it. Just remember to get something done or they’ll eventually realize how much you suck at working from home…

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