Our Hangout

E-mail not helping?

After many years of depending on e-mail, I'm starting to feel e-mail is very counter productive. I decided to do a little test and actually record how much time I spend reading and responding to e-mails in a week. I was actually so surprised by the results, that all I will say is, it's a whole lot of time.

Yes, you could say I'm a slow learner on this one. However, there's a false assumption of need, when it comes to e-mail. You need to check it as often as possible and you need to respond to it as soon as possible. But what it's started to feel like to me, comparing it to the phone, is like you have the phone ringing non-stop throughout the day, and how much fun is that? Not just that, many of those e-mails, are just not e-mails you do need to get back to right away.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out a new system of dealing with e-mail. Not sure whether that means checking e-mail just once a day or what yet. I also think when you check it in the day matters as I've spent the large part of a morning responding to e-mails because it's the first to-do thing in my calendar each day. I'm not sure whether I'm strong enough to check it early and not respond to it right away, I think it's just second nature, anyway, still figuring this out.

Kernel Panic on a Mac

If you end up here, because you did a search on Kernel panics, I hope this helps you - if not, this post will not matter to you.

If you've ever turned on your mac to the find the above message on your mac. You've began a frustrating day. This happened to me last week. I should say that my system is an iBook G4 14" 1.42Ghz

The above is called a Kernel Panic. The problem, however, is that once restart your computer you will pretty quickly be met by the same message.

A quick (not really) read over many, many forums will tell you, you've got a serious problem on your hands. And in the end will likely not result in your fixing your problem. More often than not, the conclusion in the forums and from apple seems to be, you've got a bad logic board. A costly repair.
However, from what I can tell, a lot of the time, that's the conclusion people arrive at because they can't figure out what the real problem is. by the way, read the whole thing before doing anything.

I had my Ibook G4 completely dismantled two times in as many days. I'm hoping I can save you some of that, although if have the same issue as I did, you'll need to disassemble your mac. Don't do this if you're under warranty, try the easy and basic steps and if they don't work, sent it to Apple. However, if your system is older and warranty is long gone and you have the guts, have fun.

The first thing I suggest you do, which I only did second day after having my system in pieces twice is to find and check your panic log found in your library/logs/panic logs. Every time your computer has one of these panics it logs it. Open up your last few logs and read them. Look for keywords. There's lots of computer mumbo jumbo you won't understand, but in mine, and as I'm finding in many other cases, you'll find one or two occasions in the very long log where the words Airport Extreme come up. If that's you the answer is simple, take out your airport extreme card. That was my issue. I've now been using my computer for one week without a hint of these kernels.

The problem, your card is built into your system, right beside your hard drive. And you'll have to dismantle the whole system. Several pages online to guide you through this. In the near future I'll be getting a new card, for now, I just keep a direct line to my modem, like the old days.

If that's your issue, you'll be happy with the fix. I not read on. Hope you had your infomation backed up. This time, fortunately, I had. So, with the exception of time, I lost nothing.

Simply put most sites will tell you to reset your pmu, vram, and pram... if you haven't already tried that, I would start there. Many sites out there that explain these processes, and you can find it easily. So open another window and try that, if it works, wonderful.

If that doesn't work, the next step is your disk utility. Do permissions and disk repairs. If you can get into your mac using safe mode press apple key+shift on start up - keep the two keys pressed down until start up. You are now in safe mode if you go to applications and to your utilities folder you'll find the disk utilities app. (if not there, just search for it) Once there, just follow directions and let the disk repair do just that repair your disk and disk permissions. If you can't do this, you can do this from your original disk by loading from them (apple key+C) at startup. Instead of doing an install you can go to the menu bar on top and find Disk Utilities and run the same process.

If none of that works, then you might just have a bad logic board. And if your system is more than 3 years old, that's not a worthwhile investment in my opinion.

If you're under warranty send your computer back, they'll go as far as replacing it. If you open it yourself, you're likely to do something that voids the warranty. If like me, warranty days wore out years ago, but your 4 year old mac still runs better than a new PC, the fix is worthwhile. After all, it's already not working.

Hope that helps somebody. I know I spent many hours reading many forums without too much help.