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Trying to update to the new iPhone OS v3.0 and was repeatedly getting this error message in iTunes.
We could not complete your iTunes Store request.
An unknown error occured (-4).
There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.
Apparently, Rich Hauck has the solution.
1. Quit iTunes
2. Navigate to System/Library/Extensions and delete AppleMobileDevice.kext (you may be prompted to enter your admin information)
3. Restart iTunes
Directions are also official via Apple Support.
A few weeks months back, the heat in my poor little 1999 Dodge Stratus (it’s racked up like 30,000 miles in the last year– pretty impressive) began to have issues. Well I guess it had exactly one issue. The heat (and A/C) had exactly two settings. Freeze or swelter.
Some research on the interwebs told me that I was looking at a blown blower motor resistor– pretty much it fit my one-and-only symptom; my heat or air conditioning now had only one setting. (Apparently this is because the current running the high-speed setting on the fan bypasses the resistor, so it doesn’t care if the resistor has passed on or not).
However, the aforementioned interwebs did not have sufficient step-by-step directions that were explained so easy that a Caveman such as myself could do it. What follows is (and sorry for the lack of photography) a (hopefully) dumbed-down version of exactly how to save yourself from paying some fat, greasy mechanic with Dale Earnhardt’s number shaved into his back hair $100 to fix it for you.
Purchase yourself a nice new, shiny resistor. I originally wanted to buy from Autozone since I live a block away from them. I called them; they told me that had none in stock but they could order one for like $23– hoping to find one in town, I called Advance and they had one left for the bargain basement price of $14. I’m sure a plethora of other auto parts stores would have tripped over themselves to make a buck on a generic piece of plastic, so call around; it’s a part that’s a tad obscure, but you shouldn’t be paying more than $15-18 for one.
Disconnect the battery? Some people recommend to disconnect the negative (black) terminal on your battery before you do this. I did not because I’m lazy. However, remember, you are working in the vicinity of the airbags, so there is always a possibility something might go wrong. If you are one of these people who fears the unlikely, feel free to disconnect using a 1/2″ (I think?) ratchet and run a few wraps of electric tape around the cable end.
Pull the passenger side under-dash off. I refer to this as an under-dash because I’m too automobile-illiterate to know the actual term. Kickpanel? Floor panel? Whatever it is, it’s the plastic panel underneath the glovebox. (NOTE: Do not listen to anyone tell you anything about having to take the glovebox out! Under zero circumstances does the glovebox need to be removed. Unless, of course, you need to remove the glovebox for some other tedious task, in which case you probably shouldn’t be reading this for instructions on how to do that.)
Wait, how do you pull this panel off? Well it’s not really that simple. The trick with the Stratus is that there are two plastic plugs. If you are sitting in the passenger seat one is above your feet all the way at the back of the panel, smack dab in the center of the vertical portion of it that hangs down (about 6 inches above where the panel meets the floor). The second one is upside down on the right side of the panel, about 4 inches from the edge. These plugs are shady characters. A simple tug and they do not come off. A gentle spin and they do not unlock. No, they are the cheap, tapered, wedges-so-terrible-only-Satan-would-use-them pieces of garbage that only a designer for a failing American car company would love. The dirty little secret? You have to pull them. And you have to use a bit of force. The best way I found was to hold the panel all the way up against where it was attached (i.e., push it in the OPPOSITE direction of taking it off), at which point there will be a small gap between the panel and the head of the plug. At this point, you should be able to get a small pair of needlenose pliers on the shaft of the plug and if you pull-and-twist (sexual innuendo aside) you should be able to wiggle them off. Get the one on the right side off first, then the one in the back– once these are off, you should be able to slide the panel slightly to the right (there’s a little bit of overhang where it is close to the center console) and then pull out. Voila.
Take out the old blower motor resistor. This seems like the easiest part of the whole ordeal, so I won’t be too verbose. Sitting in front of you (a little to the right of center) should be the blower motor. Ahead of (towards the front of the car) and to the left of this should be the resistor (for those even more automobile-illiterate than me– it’s a plastic rectangle with two screws on either end). There should be two sets of wires dangling down. Remove these wires. It is important to depress a little clip along the side of each bundle to get it to “unlock” from the resistor itself. Take an 8mm (or 5/16″) nut-driver (preferable– you can also use a 1/4″ drive ratchet) and remove the old resistor by popping out the two screws.
Replace the resistor and slap the panel back on. OK, this is the easiest part of the ordeal. Put the new resistor into the slot where the old one was (note the same orientation). Screw it back in using the screws you just pulled out; and reattach the wires as such. Almost done! Put back the kickboard (under-dash– whatever) by pushing it back (and sliding it a bit to the right) and push those plastic pins (if you didn’t snap them off) back into their little holes; knowing full well the next time you get back under here, you’ll still be cursing their existence. On the off chance you get pissed off and “accidentally” snap one like me, you can always run a Philips head through the kickboard into the mount for easy (improved) future removal!
Turn on the heat and bask in being able to drive without having the throttle the fan every 30 seconds to keep the inside of your car at a reasonable temperature. And even better; don’t forget the ego boost you gain because you feel that you are kinda-sorta capable at performing extremely (but worthwhile) basic auto repair tasks!
I just picked up a Western Digital 1 TB Element hard drive for under $100 from Dell SB. As a hedge against data loss, I’m using it as an inclusive backup for my Macbook (via Time Machine) as well as some important media files on my Windows/Ubuntu box.
There are two reasons I want to partition this drive. One, Time Machine has no feature that allows you to bound the size of the backups. Therefore, it will keep adding incremental backups without removing older data until it runs out of room on whatever drive you are using. Considering I only have a 160 GB hard drive in my Macbook; wasting 1 TB of space is pointless, and partitioning a portion of the free space for Time Machine allows it to be “bounded.” Secondly, by partitioning the drive with two file formats, I can easily attach the drive to my network (via Airport Extreme, for example) and have it be accessible from all my computers. Therefore, simple Windows backups using SyncBack can be done using the same disk as no-touch backups using Apple’s Time Machine.
So how do you set up two partitions on an external USB drive– one for Time Machine and one for using with a Windows box?
1.) Plug your USB external hard drive into your Mac.
2.) Open Apple’s “Disk Utility” — this can be found in the Utilities folders within the Applications directory.
3.) On the left hand side, you will see the hard drive you wish to partition — you will likely see the manufacturer name (HD, not necessarily enclosure) — match the manufacturer and size. Select this drive (the top level, not any sublevels within the drive).
4.) Select the “Partition” tab on the top of the right side of the utility window.
5.) In the “Partition” tab select the number of partitions that you want from the ‘Volume Scheme’ drop-down menu. If you are planning on using a two-partition scheme like me (one for Mac, one for Windows), select “2 partitions.”
6.) Select one of the partitions by clicking on one of the “boxes” underneath the dropdown menu. They will likely be named “Untitled X.” When a partition is selected it will be bounded by a blue border and you will notice that both “Name” and “Format” are available.
7.) Start with your Mac (in my case, Time Machine) partition. Select a name, size, and choose either Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for a partition that you will use with Time Machine or use as a boot volume. Select Mac OS Extended (No Journaling) if you wish to use this partition for Mac media or data storage.
8.) Select the other partition by clicking on it. For a Windows partition, select “FAT” from the drop-down menu. The name is not case-sensitive (i.e., must be in all CAPS) and cannot contain spaces. I typically will name this “WINEXT” or “WDWIN.” Something short and sweet in case you need to browse to it through a shell.
9.) Select each additional partition (if any) and then name and set the format.
10.) Click “Apply.”
Voila! You now have a drive that Time Machine can use for Macbook backups, but you also have a partition for media/data file storage on your other boxes as well!
CNN.com is running a story regarding whether Americans are becoming desensitized to the notion of a trillion dollars in light of the bailout bill. There is no real argument here– the growing economy and significant inflation have brought us from an era where cars cost $1,000 to the point where one can become a millionaire simply by spinning a giant wheel on The Price is Right in a mere 50 years, signifying that precedent certainly exists for breaking through yet another ‘-illion’ barrier.
The part that caught my eye was nestled away a few paragraphs in. It is not an indictment of the premise of the column, nor the veracity of the claims made by those within. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell believes that the growing stimulus package is detrimental to the American economy.
“To put a trillion dollars in context, if you spend a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spent a trillion,” McConnell said.
CNN checked McConnell’s numbers with noted Temple University math professor and author John Allen Paulos.
I’m not sure if this is merely for name-dropping purposes, but the simple problem for which CNN felt obliged to use a “Temple University math professor” to solve is something that might be better suited for a 2nd grade quiz.
2008 years x 365.25 days in a year (accounting for leap years; would account for a .3% error) = 733,422 days x $1,000,000 per day = $733,422,000,000 or $733.5 billion.
Shockingly, Paulos’ result?
“A million dollars a day for 2,000 years is only three-quarters of a trillion dollars. It’s a big number no matter how you slice it,” Paulos said.
Glad it took us one university professor and three paragraphs to verify McConnell’s “claim.” And with the extra money the journalist got for putting in “overtime” on that piece, he/she just got one step closer to the elusive trillion dollar plateau.
So earlier this evening I upgraded my iPhone 3G to the latest firmware (2.2.1). I should note that this is mildly counterintuitive, because I’ve been contemplating jailbreaking my phone for a while now, and this update serves to merely delay that wait should I choose to follow through. But hey, I like shiny new things.
Immediately after updating, I noticed my Plantronics Bluetooth headset wasn’t connecting. I would put the headset into “discover” mode (this is typically done by holding down the power button on a given headset for anywhere between five and ten seconds) and would flip Bluetooth to ON (underneath Settings -> General). However, the phone would just stall, and would essentially time out trying to find the headset. One thing I soon noticed is that the little Bluetooth icon that used to be in the top right corner of the phone (next to the battery indicator) had gone missing. Problem.
My first order of business was to do a soft reset by powering the phone down and then back on. I hoped to trip whatever in the software was causing the phone’s internal Bluetooth chip to not activate. That didn’t work. I then did a hard reset (hold down power and home button for ten seconds and continue holding until the Apple logo appears). That didn’t work.
Finally, I stumbled upon a post in a dusty corner of the internet that told me to flick Airplane mode on and off a few times and try again. Well it seems unbelievable, but after flipping Airplane mode on and off once, the Bluetooth icon returned to my dock and I was able to pair easily.
Thanks to the great state of Illinois, I am granted four weeks leave per calendar year from my job as a research assistant at the University of Illinois (at Urbana-Champaign). This meant I got to partake in the excitement of taking a couple weeks off to make the flight home to Connecticut to spend Christmas and New Year’s at home like the good old New England boy I am. Being the foresightful (Firefox doesn’t believe that’s a word) person that I am, I booked my tickets three weeks in advance (the plan was to fly out December 19th and return on January the 6th). While I had the option of flying out of O’Hare or Midway in Chicago, Indianapolis (KIND) International’s slightly shorter distance as well as ease of actually getting to the airport and then to the terminal outweighed the incremental price increase to fly out of the less popular airport.
As my outbound flight on Friday the 19th grew closer, a growing certainty that Murphy’s Law was attempting to rear it’s head began setting in. A nor’easter due to strike that weekend was being whispered about by (my fellow) meteorologists up and down the east coast. Come all day Wednesday and in the morning hours on Thursday before, the National Weather Service had raised various flags. Winter storm advisories and watches (soon to be warnings) were flying. Both the GFS and NAM models dumped over an inch of QPF (liquid water) over the northeast; and given thickness profiles and surface temperatures, it seemed certain that the New England region would be covered in a general blanket of snow that ranged anywhere from 6 inches to a foot (and maybe plus in some localized areas).
Following my final exam of the semester on Thursday morning, I went back to my office to find that Northwest Airlines was issuing what they call “weather waivers” for all individuals on flights to or from the northeast (states of CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME, NY, and PA) for Friday-Sunday. (I had secretly been hoping these would be available all along, which led to constant F5 hits in Firefox the night before) Taking advantage of this, I called NWA’s travel hotline, managed to get a representative (a fairly amicable fellow named Doug), and subsequently (and surprising painlessly) switched my flight from Friday at 1:35 PM, to Saturday at the same time. (Editorial: Weather waivers are amazing. Take advantage of them.)
On Saturday, I arrived at the airport’s new Cook Terminal about an hour and a half before boarding. Thanks to the sheer enormity of the economy lot (there used to be about ten different parking tiers, now there are three), it took about 20-30 minutes to hop on a shuttle and arrive at the building itself. Check in was only mildly painless, dealing with the usual annoyances of using a computer to deal with check in, but then having to awkwardly stand in the way as I waited for my baggage to be checked. The earliest foreboding of future complications manifested itself when my flight was showed as departing at 4:34 PM (while still managing to travel back in time for a 3:00 PM arrival at Bradley due to a computer glitch– an error that absolutely confounded the young Asian woman (clearly not a Cornell CS major) next to me).
At this point, I relegated myself to hanging around the airport’s new rotunda, complete with no less than six slightly-above-quality eateries before even passing through security. After a satisfying (and drawn-out) bacon burger (as well as a pint or two of Newcastle) at the “Indy 500 Grill,” I sauntered over to the windows on the southwest side of the terminal to attempt to get a look at the takeoff/landing operations at the airport. This was not possible however, as since my arrival, the flight tower had switched the direction of takeoffs and landings in accordance with the surface wind direction. On my way past, I managed to snag a look at one of the monitors and noticed my flight had been delayed until 6:30 PM. Not good. I spent some time thumbing through papers my adviser had provided me with as what essentially amounted to “summer reading: winter break style.” 7:20 PM popped up on the screen. Alright, now we have a bit of a problem. At some point or another, I made my way downstairs to see if any Northwest representatives at the check-in counter could enlighten me as to exactly what was going on. After all, the weather was still fine where I was, and perfectly fine in Hartford (though would be trending to not so fine overnight). Luckily, I bumped into a rather official looking gentleman, who was able to look up the status of my flight. Apparently, the CRJ (that’s fancy airplane speak for “Canadair Regional Jet”– a regional airliner with a (unrelated to this entry) strikingly poor in-flight deicing system given that it was developed north of 45 degrees latitude) that I was supposed to fly on was grounded in Minneapolis due to the blizzard conditions there, and that they were going to put us on another CRJ-200 that was coming in from Boston on the late flight (ironically, the flight I would probably take back on my way from Boston if I didn’t always end up on US Airways). He did confirm that “the bird was in the air” however, which pleased me greatly, and I finally (five hours later than I originally planned), made my way through a very empty security line.
I sat down at the gate and waited patiently for my flight to arrive, all the while trying to make arrangements for pickup at Bradley later that night. Soon, the plane pulled up to the gate, and the pilots and passengers disembarked. I put my phone down and began thumbing through a Scientific American that I had picked up at one of the little shops in the terminal and noticed that a couple employees were making there way down the runway. Thinking nothing of this, I went back to my reading, only to be jerked up about 15 minutes later by a call over the speaker that we were now pushed back to 8:53 PM. At this point, I’m beyond confused, and attempt to make my way over to the counter to confirm the (seemingly) grim news (I also hadn’t heard the exact time, and the computer monitor’s were not updating). No sooner than I walk over do I get to the desk and the old lady behind it looks at me with that look. Dammit. “Flight 2171 to Bradley is canceled.” Let the record show, that I’m pretty agitated, but other passengers who have now been in the terminal for 36 hours straight (they lack my amazing foresight in switching flights– that or they simply weren’t able to) are absolutely irate. Luckily, thanks to my wandering over to the counter because of my lack of full attentiveness to whatever Northwest decreed over the loudspeaker, I am at the front of the line and am the 2nd person to attempt to get rebooked for the next day. The computer automatically scheduled me on a 3 leg flight– first to Detroit (NWA’s hub), then to Houston (seriously?), then to Bradley at around 11 PM. This was unacceptable, not only because brief jaunt into the land of cowboys and Matt Schaub, but also because impending weather indicates the odds of me making it to Bradley the next evening are about the same as Sarah Palin winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee (while this analogy is admittedly extremely poor, be thankful I didn’t associate Palin to Vick via the transitive property of pitbullness).
I managed to book a 7 AM flight to Logan the next morning, and then book a secondary flight at 9 PM to La Guardia (also of note, they had no problem booking me on TWO flights into major cities for the next day. What does this tell you about the number of people they are actually selling tickets to?). The best part about the whole experience was Northwest’s generous package as compensation. By generous, I mean I received $25 off my next NWA flight. That’s right– for stranding me and 70 other passengers in Indianapolis while the weather outside was far from frightful, we all received 1.6532% off our next flight. What is this, 19-fucking-72? Flights aren’t $39 anymore. With that ordeal now out of the way, I spent the rest of the evening back in the rotunda, since the portion of the terminal with the gates closed at midnight. Two cold slices of pizza later, I tried to get a few hours of sleep on two ottomans I had slung together from the bar. I might have topped 2 hours, of which no more than 30 minutes was consecutive. Crying children and old Asian men practicing their golf swings ruled the evening. Next time, I’m bringing a tent. At 4:30 AM, I managed to make it down to check-in (they wouldn’t hold my checked baggage overnight), only to find myself 30th in line and the counter not opening until 5. Apparently a 737 into LAX was canceled the evening before as well– and I have to wonder if people who showed up at 5 (and were met with a line out the terminal doors) were able to get on the next flight to LA; which left around 6:50. The most critical portion of this venture was finding out exactly why we couldn’t leave the night before (the words “canceled - crew” showed up on my boarding pass which contained my original, and now rebooked, flight information). You see, Northwest Airlines ran out of pilots. Yes, of the two things you need to fly, they had trouble supplying me with both. The pilots were originally there, but the plane was not– then they breached their workable hours, so the plane arrived, but no pilots. Fantastic Northwest, kudos to you.
Luckily, security was a breeze, even in my half-awake stupor, and we actually got on the plane this time. After a deicing period that took much longer than it probably should have, we took off through the dark in Indianapolis and hurtled towards Boston. I remember putting on my headphones, but not much after that, the next thing I knew was that our pilot was instructing everyone to buckle up for what would likely be a bumpy landing. By this time, Boston was now being pounded with coastal storm #2, and of course, I’m stuck in the middle of it. However, the landing was not as problematic as it could have been, and aside from the regular roller coaster ride through the sky, we managed to touch down on the runway (covered in a few inches of snow), and thanks to a little help from the reverse thrusters (which I’ve only heard used once on this particular type of plane– that being on my no-flaps emergency landing in Indianapolis in early November) managed to stop before careening anywhere that could have presented a problem (unlike COA1404, which had slid off the runway in Denver the night before– we all got to watch the news at the airport bar). Delicous irony continued to ooze as we arrived at the gate and found that Logan had closed the airport to departures and had enacted a ground control program for other flights destined to KBOS around the country.
As an epilogue, I made it home via bus on Monday, arriving exactly 74 hours after I was supposed to. The flight I had been rescheduled on to La Guardia was delayed by four hours, and I would have arrived around 3 AM in New York had I ended up not being able to go to Boston. Like I accurately predicted, the Houston-Bradley leg of my computer-rebooked flight was cancelled, which would have caused me to spend the evening in Texas, trying to figure out which “Drill, Baby, Drill!” shirt best on me.
While sitting in the terminal and not playing with my iPhone, I was allowed to think about all the incompetance that had followed me around that weekend. Not so much the weather, because when that comes, you can’t stop it. But Saturday’s cancellation was a bungling of epic proportions; both from the fleet management (see below) and the crew available on staff aspects. I can now say for confidence that if some random stranger had walked up to me in that terminal and said, “how would you fix the airlines?” I would have responded with, “sit down, buddy, and I’ll tell you a story…”
1.) Incorporate more complex weather forecasting into fleet distribution and operations models. The issue that bothered me the most by far– almost all of this past week’s flight issues dealt with weather in some form or another. Long de-icing lines, icy runways, IFR/LIFR conditions; all of which contributed to a signficant number of airport delays and cancellations. While there is no question that immediate weather concerns affected many of the flights (for example, flights scheduled for Friday night from KORD to KBOS had to deal with weather issues at the immediate present at not one, but both airports), the issues and backlogs on the relatively quiet Saturday and Mondays can partially be allocated to poor planning on fleet distribution by the major airlines. If Pinnacle Airlines (a regional airline which flies under the Northwest banner) flies five flights a day with a certain CRJ-200, then flying your last flight during the day prior into a region where you are likely to be grounded the following morning doesn’t seem like prudent practice. Yet this happened with a significant portion of Northwest’s fleet the Saturday I spent in Indianapolis. Many passengers were told that flights were delayed not due to weather, but because of a lack of planes. This is somewhat true– the weather was not causing a problem at neither the departure airport nor the arrival airport. However, the reason for the lack of planes was the strong low pressure system causing blizzard conditions over the Midwest. Flights that had flown their last flight Friday into Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Grand Forks, Bismarck, and other airports that are serviced by many regional jets were now grounded. This, coupled with the the cost-cutting pinches airlines have enacted on fleets caused a significant ripple affect across the country that canceled hundreds of flights that would have been perfectly acceptable to fly in any other scenario.
2.) Use new codeshares across airlines to decrease the number flights into/out of regional airports while maintaining current passenger volume. Does Ithaca-Tompkins need three or four different airlines monopolizing the services of half-full CRJ and Saab regional planes with up to ten in/out flights on a daily basis– especially given the proximity of Syracuse and Rochester? In this instance, a codeshare system set up among all major airlines would be an effecient way of getting passengers in/out of the area, while cutting back on the number of flights, and freeing up regional airliners to be used on other regional routes around the country. If this creates a plethora of regional aircraft, then skim off the top and leave the excess in hangers to be used as backup in case of mechanical malfunction, or weather situations such as this past week. Even with the extra hanger maintainence needed for the “backup” planes, operating costs would decrease due to decreased number of flights which also lessens fuel. This also frees up pilot hours to fly more profitable routes as well as other types of jet liners that can carry the burden of air passengers more efficiently from major hub airports. This is in no way a condemnation of the regional jet service boom of the late 1980’s and 1990’s; however, the hub and spoke system of air transport needs to be modified. Hubs need to be more evenly distributed around the country. Flying a regional jet from Milwaukee to Louisville, KY might not be profitable, however, having an airline utilize a connecting flight through La Guardia doesn’t endear the efficiency of air travel to the average consumer. “Regional hubs” need to allow for painless connections, with short time-scales, but correctly managed traffic flow.
Admittedly there are some likely some gross oversights in the theories posted above. I’ll admit, I’m not in charge of a major airline; I’m just smarter than those who are.
