I am reprinting recommended startup sequences from a Mac forum for my personal reference. Thanks to MOFS for the original post:

Keywords: OS X; startup; won’t; boot; screen; funky; help…

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There used to be a deer crossing sign down the road but they took it down because people kept hitting the deer. 

After installing the new thermocouple, the hot water heater worked and heated the water in the tank. Thereafter, the pilot went out yet again. I contacted the retailer and they warrantied the gas valve but would have to charge me for labor to install. I decided to remove and replace the part myself and learned a few tricks along the way.

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While I was traveling last week, my wife ran into issues with our 15-month-old hot water heater; the pilot light would not stay lit. She managed to re-light it and got hot water for a single use but it went out again. Upon my return, we once again faced cold water. We turned to the Internet to try and diagnose the issue and found that if a pilot would light, but not stay lit, it could be 3 potential issues:

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We were invited to attend the Austin Board of Realty annual tradeshow, the Realty Round Up. Goomzee Connect was VERY well received and we have some partners interested in working with us to promote our services throughout Texas. Here is a photo of our booth the day before the show (without all the table props).

My fortune from lunch yesterday.  I’ve never seen one like this and ironically, I’m a computer guy. I had to share - enjoy!

We layed out the boards on two 2×4s held up by cinder blocks so we could stain them. After about 30-45 minutes, we flipped over the boards and stained the opposite site. Another 45 minutes and although still damp, I proceeded to install the first batch and get the fence started. The original fence was out of plumb so it will take a little finesse for a couple custom pieces to tie it all together. See below.

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In my last post (below) I upgraded the electrical service to the house to support a hot tub and any other needs in the future. Prior to the delivery of the hot tub, I decided to install a 6-foot cedar privacy fence using the existing chain link fence posts. Given my neighbor has a dog, we thought it would be best to leave the chain link side towards his yard to protect our fence.

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To support the new hot tub, and any other upgrades to home appliances and amenities, we decided to upgrade the electrical service to the house from 100 amp to 200 amp. This requires collaboration with the carpenter (me), city (building permits/inspectors), electrician and power company. You first get your permits, then schedule w/ the utilities (24 hours notice) to shut the power off to the house, then have the electricians install the new service so inspectors will pass it and “green tag” the job, otherwise the power company will not hook the power back up. See below:

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Jamie and I had to pose for photos at her parents’ house the other day and we really liked one.  Given we don’t take too many photos, I decided to publish.

I’m not the most photogenic person so have to take advantage when they turn out okay. 

I visited iStock Photo today and it was inaccessible but their error message was pleasantly humorous.  I reckon if every system had error messages like this, people would be a much better mood when calling tech support.  Enjoy!

Ahhh… the application made a boo boo. 

Mine was fantastic, obviously!    Have a great day and remember, things could be worse.

I recently ran across an issue where emails were being rejected from one server as it did not resolve reverse DNS. It was sending email alerts for certain events and we had no way to tell if mails were failing as spam filters were dumping them into a black hole somewhere. The solution was to modify our system to publish alert emails to a database table instead, then have a separate application check for unsent mail in the database and send it using SMTP authentication from our standard mail server. This is likely a common need for various systems so I thought I’d share the design/source to help others.

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I always forget because it’s infrequent that I actually have to maintain servers but from time to time I have to match our in-house dev box with production environments. This is primarily for my recollection but hopefully it helps others too:

Checking if package exists:

rpm -q package-name

Downloading RPMs from remote site:

wget http://www.site.com/path/to/file-with-long.name.i386.rpm

Installing new package:

rpm -ivh file-with-long.name.i386.rpm

Removing package:

rpm -e file-with-long

Updating existing package:

rpm -UvH file-with-long.name.i386.rpm

My friends Sumit and Ana had their second child, a son named Shyan. See one of the photos they shared and the note about their new bundle of joy. CONGRATULATIONS!

Ashyana poking her little brother on the nose. “Is he real?”

Message from Sumit to Friends/Family:

Friends,
I am very happy to announce the birth of our baby boy, Shyan Callan Guha. He came into the world on Thursday August 16th at 3:21 am at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, weighing in at 6 lbs 9 oz and measuring 19 inches long. He is already very adept at mind-control and seems to be the only one able to calm down his big sister when everything else has failed. For those who are interested, the name Shyan (pronounced ‘s h a r n’) is an Indian name meaning ‘exhilaration’.

Mother and son are doing great. Father and daughter are ecstatic and running on adrenalin.

Here are a few pictures of the little one. More pics will be published on http://www.anaraja.com shortly, so stay tuned.
We would love to hear from you and, if in SF, please drop by.

Take care,
Ana, Sumit, and Ashyana

I wanted to vent about the silly high-definition DVD format wars as it’s a pain for consumers. I liken the HDDVD and BluRay battle to having 3-4 phone books in a city. Of course competition is supposed to be great for the consumer, but imagine how many titles will have to be replaced once the studios and manufacturers decide on a single format. In the end, the consumer loses so not all competition is good.

The BluRay disc holds 50 GB of data compared with the HDDVD’s 30 GB and it seems they are winning over more studios and titles. I had considered buying a BluRay player but then see press noting that the movie Bourne Ultimatum will only be available on HDDVD. My only recourse is to wait it all out, or buy a multi-player by LG. At $1200 retail (although reducing to $999 given Samsung will introduce their dual format player soon), this is a steep price to pay.

The reason I liken the war to having multiple phone books is because of how they hurt businesses and ultimately, consumers. For many years in my hometown, the USWest (now DEX) was the only phonebook. Businesses would advertise in the Yellow Pages and consumers knew how to find them. Then another publisher decides to come into town and dropping books on doorsteps. Now salesmen are hitting up businesses twice, spending twice the budget to reach the same amount of consumers. There are now 4 phone books in Missoula and if businesses choose to advertise in all 4, their prices will rise to cover the costs and this ultimately hurts the consumer. I personally advise consumers to throw out all other books and all businesses to advertise in only one.

Consumers should also take control in the high-definition DVD battle and only purchase one format of disc. This will end the war, bring the equipment prices down and ultimately benefit the consumers. It looks like Toshiba might lose this time (they beat Sony during their last format war).

One of our baby girls, Nikki, decided to take a cat nap and dream about Met Life’s new 9 lives insurance program - or she just likes Snoopy. 

After seeing recent Pepsi Max commercials, my colleagues and I opened up that age-old discussion on why people yawn, and why is it contagious. I saw this news special and thought I’d share. Supposedly yawning cools our brain and can be prevented w/ a cold compress or by breathing through our nose which is a natural brain coolant.

Why People Yawn

Next time your friend is yawning, consider it a compliment that you really have their brain working and they need to cool it off.

I never knew this but the other day while in line at Dairy Queen a kid on a bicycle rode up, asked for any mistakes and they gave him a free sundae. The employees told me they only offer them to kids. So, if you want to keep the kids happy and save a buck, try that trick next Dairy Queen visit.

We leveraged our cinder blocks and bought 12 paver blocks to build some steps for our patio.  Our goal was something that won’t wear and we have options to change it up in the future if we need a lower rise.  We doubled up cinder blocks along the front/side of the deck and then bough 12×12 pavers at Home Depot ($1.89 apiece).  For about $30, we had wraparound steps in only an hour.  We may buy some sealant and adhere the pavers to the cinder blocks.

Steps have a 10-inch rise and 12-inch run.  This design gives options to build 8-inch rise steps if needed in the future.