Last October, I drew up this diagram to help my friend Erk set up his then-new Yamaha mixer with the rest of his podcasting gear.

The main reason I made the diagram was to help demonstrate how to create a mix-minus situation for monitoring/recording Skype calls. And back in October, Erk was able to get his rig set up and working properly. This month, he moved his podcasting studio, and after he had everything together at the new location, he found he was having some trouble getting the mix-minus working. He messaged me via Twitter, and we eventually connected on Skype so I could try and help him out. After a couple hours of troubleshooting, we were able to get things working again. It seemed that, for the most part, the hardware was all properly wired and configured. The problem came down to some software settings, and ultimately could’ve probably been resolved much faster if Erk’s laptop had been restarted after the software settings were altered (even though the machine never prompted for a restart). Regardless, I enjoyed talking to Erk (and his mom Judy) over Skype, and it’s always good to help out a friend. But when working with computers, it pays to remember troubleshooting rule #1: Restart, restart, restart.

I realized recently that my desk was in pretty sad shape. I think that, over time, it had become overloaded with too much stuff. There were cables and wires everywhere, creating small jungle-like thatches that would’ve challenged even the most formidable of machete attacks.

Last Saturday, I decided to tear the whole mess apart, with the hopes that I could reassemble it into a more orderly situation. This is how it looked in the beginning:

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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything directly related to my struggles with weight loss. But, I have still been doing a lot of work in that area. I set a goal at the beginning of the year to be under 240 pounds by my birthday. Today, I weighed in at 238 pounds. My birthday isn’t until next month. I’ve lost about 15 pounds since the beginning of the year, and I’ve still got a long way to go.
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I recently upgraded my Mac Mini to the latest version of OS X, 10.5.7. Within the next few days, I started noticing that my USB-based devices were acting funny. I needed to tweak my HP printer to get it working again. Then, a memory card reader and an external hard drive I had connected to the computer through a USB hub were no longer being detected by the Mini. I initially blamed the lack of detection on the hub, as it is a cheap three-dollar thing I bought from an eBay vendor in China. But today, I needed to use the memory card reader. Since I knew it wasn’t working over the hub, I plugged it directly into the Mini. Still nothing. Later, I did the same thing with the external hard drive (a Seagate model) and the same thing happened. The problem wasn’t the hub after all. I did some searching and found that many people are reporting similar issues. The current line from Apple, as far as I can tell, is that the company has updated the I/O software for USB connectivity, and it’s up to everyone else to comply. I suppose it’s possible that Seagate might release new drivers/firmware for the hard drive. But I don’t think I’ll see any fixes for the rest of my USB gear. I still have a couple devices that I haven’t tested. But at this point, I’ve got no access to a 500 GB hard drive or the photos from my digital camera. That’s enough for me to want to downgrade back to 10.5.6. It’s not a huge deal to downgrade, but I’d rather not do it unless I have to. I could hold out, hoping that a software fix will come. Maybe with the release of the new “Snow Leopard” OS. Or I should just accept the fact that I’m going to be stuck with 10.5.6 for awhile. Unless I’d like to buy all new peripherals, of course (and I don’t). One thing I will say for Windows is that it usually has much better support for legacy devices than OS X. But, hey. If you want to hang with Apple, you’ve got to stay on the cutting edge. Even if it means having to buy all new stuff every time an OS update comes down. I mean, we all must already be rich to even afford these shiny Macs in the first place, right?

Jen and I were planning on having lunch downtown this afternoon. We were looking to go somewhere we either hadn’t been to before, or hadn’t been to in awhile. Despite some excellent suggestions, we decided to stop in at Mondeo Pronto. Neither one of us had eaten there before, so it seemed like a good choice.
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