Easter Eggs

Well it seems that I have been bitten by the bad luck bug. Last night my work machine was purring along just fine. Tripping up here and there, but nothing over the top considering I was thinking that my issues were with Google, slow scripts and the like. Then I come into the office this morning and it was kernal panic after kernal panic – though not enough to get me into a general panic. Why? Well, it’s a Mac, and if things go wrong, they go really wrong and if not, the answer is usually pretty easy to figure out. So I started to try to figure this issue out, is this this app or that, this file or that – nothing. I tried TechTools, nothing. I tried another OS – Knoppix – and again nothing. So, then I called AppleCare. The guy on the other side suggested that I try everything that I tried – P RAM, TechTools and the like but then he suggested that I get the disks that came with my laptop and use the hardware test on those disks. Hardware tests?Yes, apparently now, maybe as a result of the Intel transition, Apple hardware now comes with specific disks for specific models, for this reason. If you hold down D on boot with the original disks that came with your machine, you can perform all manner of diagnostics on your machine (though I don’t know about repair – hence the need for TechTools and AppleCare). A quick check found nothing, but an extended check found that my RAM was dying with errors all over the place. That got me thinking… why didn’t the other tests find this? Anyway, I’m just lucky that I have my Time Machine handy if I need to rebuild the machine when I get it back.The moral of the story? AppleCare! This is the second time that it will have saved me – granted from minor hiccups that might have been just as easy for me to trouble shoot on my own – the first was a flakey video card, now the RAM – but if these problems were only on the surface and there were bigger issues hiding underneath, it certainly would have been worth the price. As it is, it’s worth the peace of mind to have someone else deal with these issues. And for the record, these are both A rev machines that have had issues. I haven’t had any issues with second gen models at all (knock on wood).