It was a sad day in Maguire history today. I finally put my Daeowoo 9000N DVD player out to pasture, and by that I mean “took it to the dump.” Had a lot of great memories with that DVD player. I applied a firmware to it that would let me play any region DVD that I wanted (so I could play my DVDs from other parts of the world of content that would never see the light of day here), and also disabled the macrovision (which never really mattered, as I only ever had it hooked up to my TV anyway) and UOPs (which let me skip those ads that some DVDs normally force you to watch. Bad DVDs, bad, naughty naughty…).

But I think I just wore out the poor thing. Mom and I both bought the exact same player, at the exact same time, at the exact same place, and hers still works great, but has never been used to the extent that mine has. Plus hers is situated in a basement which is a cooler environment all year round, while mine is above ground in a cramped bedroom that is always several degrees warmer than anywhere else.

The symptoms it first exhibited were longer load times, stuttered playback, and all round a generally noisier box than normal. At first I was able to workaround it by sometimes tilting the box slightly in one direction or another, but then I had to move it out of my cabinet altogether (thinking it might not be getting proper airflow and overheating), to me finally having to remove the outer case. Then lastly, a couple of days ago I went to go play a move after having not used the player for a few days, and it just wouldn’t play. It would keep spinning up and spinning up, desperately trying to read the disc, making all kinds of racket in the process, always worrying me that it was scratching my discs.

Finally, I got fed up and starting scouring the Web for a decent player from a reputable company that I could buy in town at a decent price and make region free. The one I ended up getting was a Philips DVP5960 from *ewwww* The Source. I don’t know what it is about RadioShack/TheSource and easily hackable DVD players, but that’s also where I bought my Daewoo oh so many years ago.

So far it does everything I could want it to do. The upscaling only works through HDMI, which I have on my TV, but don’t have a cable for (but that wasn’t really a driving factor for me anyway). It also has a USB port (apparently only USB 1) for playing video files of an external drive, but I don’t know if I’ll ever even use that.

As I mentioned last time, the fan on my ATI X800 XT is wearing out, causing all kinds of lovely “derka derka” noises in my otherwise quiet G5. Thank the gods for my MacBook, which has allowed me to keep the times I power up the G5 to a minimum until I can get a suitable replacement fan. As I also mentioned, I ordered a Zalman replacement fan, a VF900-Cu to be exact, which came a few days after my initial post. I went through the whole rigmarole of pulling out the X800 card, swearing upon dropping the screw in the case, disassembling the old fan, cleaning the old goop off, attaching the fancy new thermal heatsinks, applying the new grease, and attaching the new fan, only to find that the handy dandy thumb screws Zalman provides on the underside of the card to tighten everything together, stick out like sore thumbs (pun intended… this is where you laugh), and because of Apple’s custom engineering and intent to waste no space, there’s no room to fit the card back in the only provided AGP slot *and* have those thumb screws on there keeping everything in place (and have the proper power provided, because Apple engineered those out of sight, too), so now I’m back to my jalopy fan (now catch your breath and marvel at how long that sentence was).

So I packed the Zalman back up, and because I’m the wuss I am, have made no attempt to return it back. Who knows? Maybe it’ll come in handy in the years to come. And that’s where things have been for the last few weeks. I’ve just been living off my MacBook, without any of my iTunes being available nor being able to play any video games.

That is, until about an hour ago. After searching high and low, looking for someplace that’ll ship an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 to Canada (or within Canada), finding mostly shitty mom and pop online stores that couldn’t ship themselves out of a paper bag, made even harder by the fact that it seems to be discontinued, I ended turning to eBay. To some of you that might have seemed to be an obvious next step, but I have a strange dislike for eBay, thinking of it more as an exhausting all my other options, snakes on a plane, last resort kind of thing.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, in spite of all the countless fake eBay spam messages I’ve received over the years, my account was still alive and well, patiently awaiting the one day when I would once again return to buy Battle Beasts, Lego®, and D&D™ action figures. To put things in perspective, my current profile rating is a 12, collected during a flurry of activity between April 25th and July 17th, 1999. Yes, 1999. This is pre-Y2K stuff here, people.

But, alas, this evening’s visit was unfortunately not to purchase any assortment of molded plastic chunks of tomfoolery, but to find a replacement fan for my graphics card. And find one I did… in the UK.

We’ll see what happens *this* time.

Oh, and the Kensington mouse is working well. Haven’t really had a whole lot of time to use it, though, seeing as it’s to be used with my G5.

In my never ending quest for the perfect computer mouse, I bought another one just the other day. This one is the Kensington PilotMouse Mini Bluetooth (Model #72414). Kensington is a brand I’ve respected since way back during the days of pre-Mac OS X. They’re a little on the high-end, and thus a little more expensive, but their stuff is usually very well made (and pretty, which is always important for us Mac types). It’s a “mini” mouse meant for laptop use, but is on the large end of mini form factors, which suits me just fine. It’s actually quite similar in size to the original mouse that came with the Mac Plus. I have a hard time with the “full size” mice available nowadays that are giant lumps of plastic formed to fit a person’s right hand with ridges and lips and buttons all over the place (like my Logitech MX1000 Laser). I much prefer the simple symmetric rectangular shape. The way I grip my mouse is between my thumb and ring finger half-way down the sides of the mouse with my index and middle finger tips resting on the top of the mouse near the middle. I don’t rest my fingers near the front of the mouse, as most form-fitted mice are designed.

Anyway, I like the Kensington one so far. I’ve only been using it for about a day. Setup was a breeze. I popped open the battery compartment, placed in the batteries the way that was clearly marked, closed the compartment, turned on the mouse, and ran OS X’s built-in bluetooth device setup. I was up and running in a matter of seconds. It’s got a handy ribbed rubber grip that goes around the circumference of the mouse which I can only assume is for both my pleasure and my comfort. I miss the charging dock, as I’ve never been comfortable, environmentally-wise, with the idea of continually going through AA batteries. The tracking is probably not as good as my MX1000, but seriously, how much accuracy do I need to surf and check e-mails?

And in other computer accessory news, I’ve ordered a replacement fan for my ATI Radeon X800 XT, as the ATI one on there has started to wear out. About a week before I left on my vacation, the fan on the card started to make a winding noise, much like ED-209 did after it fell down the stairs in Robocop. I fiddled with it a bit and noticed it was a little loose and wobbling. After a few hopeless attempts to tighten it, I’ve now got it to the point where it’s quieter, but rattles, making a sound more like Archie’s jalopy. I’ve ordered a Zalman fan from NCIX to replace it. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve updated my MacBook battery escapade. Long story short, they’ve ordered me a new battery.

KB ID #304301: Battery not recognized after being fully drained

I happened to do exactly what the article says might cause it. I ran my MacBook until it went to sleep, then I left it sleeping without plugging it in for several days (actually a couple of weeks) until I went to use it this morning. The power adapter LED turns green when plugged in and attached which would normally indicate the battery is fully charged. Also the LED indicators on the bottom of the battery don’t light up when pressing the button. Lastly, I get an “X” in the battery icon of my menu bar and a message stating “No battery available” or something like that.

I had installed the latest firmware update, but not sure if that’s the cause.

None of the steps in the KB article fixed my problem. I bought the MacBook back in May, but I bought the Apple Protection Plan as well. I’m going to wait ’til next week after Christmas to call Apple Care. Nothing appears to be wrong with the MacBook itself. It runs perfectly when running off the power plug. Hopefully, I’m covered and all that’s needed is to send me another battery.

Update (2007-01-19): I still haven’t called them. I gotta do that!

Update (2007-02-10): I finally got around to calling Apple Support. Got through to a guy right away. He had me go through the steps in the KB article (resetting the PMU and whatnot) with no change. In the end, he set me up with a case number and told me to visit my nearest Apple support centre, which is FACT Computers here on Broad Street, where they’ll try to determine if its the power adapter or the battery itself (my money’s on the latter). I purchased the Apple Protection Plan at the same time as the MacBook, so the rep said they’ll likely be able to replace either. Best time for me to visit FACT is Saturdays, and considering they close in less than an hour, it’ll have to be next weekend.

Update (2007-02-17): I went by FACT Computers today. The guy there gave my MacBook a quick test with a power adaptor they had on hand, and then put in a work order for a new battery for me. He said hopefully it’ll come in by the middle or end of next week. Hopefully that puts this whole thing to rest. From now on, I think I’m going to set it to use Safe Sleep mode entirely.

Update (2007-03-03): Got a call on Friday that my battery was in. Went by FACT again and picked it up. Works great! Finally it’s all over.

Update (2007-07-04): Meant to mention this earlier. Back in late April, Apple acknowledged the battery problem with MacBooks and released a firmware update to fix it. Software Update should’ve picked it up, too. And that should have now put all this to rest.

Update (2007-07-06): I should also point out that I believe this update fixes the problem on the laptop itself, so that it won’t allow future batteries to be drained beyond recognition. I’m assuming it won’t fix an already dead battery (if I’m wrong, let me know). I would presume that once it’s a dead brick, there’s no going back and you’ll need to get it replaced.