A relative came over. We wanted to play a networked game of Jedi Knight II with him. This is our story:
We set it up on the Windows machine: Mac1 couldn’t talk to the Windows machine. We set it up on Mac2: it required the CD to be in the drive of both of them. We tried to make a disk image of the CD: it errored the first time and got stuck and chewed up all the disk space the second. We tried to do it on Mac3: it refused to read any CDs we put in. We went back to Mac2: it no longer responded to keyboard or mouse input. We forced a reboot: it lost all the email settings. We went back to Mac1: it couldn’t see our DVD burner. We downloaded Toast drivers for it: we needed to upgrade Toast. We upgraded Toast: it still didn’t work. We reset it: it started working. We finally got the networked up and working.
Our relative had just left.
Oh well. I went back up to my room. My machine no longer responded to mouse or keyboard input, or to an external mouse I plugged in. But the screen saver kept animating and the volume keys adjusted the volume. Aargh! I forced a reset. I’m afraid to open my email program.
I thought this kind of stuff was behind me. I thought these things only happened to jwz. (Update: He was dealing with a, um, much more sticky situation.) I thought it didn’t happen anymore. This doesn’t usually happen to us. What caused these six serious failures in a row?
I’m going to go open my email now. If you don’t hear from me again, you know why.
Second Update: Curt Siffert provides a plausible explanation for the preference-losing problem that’s inflicted me and others:
When the disk space is chewed up, the *.plist files can’t be written out when you try and quit the application. I don’t know why the hell they aren’t left as they are on disk before you start the application.
posted January 12, 2003 11:40 PM (Technology) #