iDallas!

In case anyone else has this same problem, I thought I would post my solution here. There seems to be a lack of real problem/solution pairs for Mac OS X out there.

The Problem:

After upgrading to OS X 10.2.8, I noticed that I couldn’t seem to drag RSS news feeds in NetNewsWire into folders to group them. I first thought it was a bug in NetNewsWire so I decided to upgrade to the newer version. While navigating my way to the upgrade in Safari, I noticed that I couldn’t copy and paste URL’s either. On top of that, dragging messages in Mail was goofy, too. It was a system-wide problem! I thought it must be the dumb 10.2.8 update. Since the first version of the update had been pulled for bugs, it seemed likely. However, I tried reinstalling 10.2 from scratch and the problem didn’t go away. Hmm. In the Console, I noticed messages like this:

Oct 5 12:05:35 delilah crashdump: Crash report written to: /Users/me/
Library/Logs/CrashReporter/pbs.crash.log

as well as…

Oct 5 13:04:44 delilah crashdump: Crash report written to: /Library/
Logs/CrashReporter/lsregister.crash.log

There were more lines about bad xml in a preferences file (Info.plist) and it was reverting to the 10.1 method of reading it and all that. I’d seen those errors before and they didn’t seem to matter. It turns out they were important this time. Upon further investigation, I found out that ‘pbs’, the process that was crashing, is the pasteboard server and is responsible for handling copy/paste actions as well as some drag and drop. Aha! I still don’t know exactly what lsregister is, but it was fixed by this solution as well.

The Solution:

This took me way too long to figure out, but it was some bad XML somewhere that was causing it to crash. I’m not sure why it was even messing with the file that was ‘bad’, but deleting the file mentioned in the error logs fixed it. Note that I also repaired my disk using DiskWarrior and it had some relatively serious problems. Those problems were probably responsible for the goofy behavior in the first place.

I’m happy to report that my powerbook is working well once again… And if I hadn’t reinstalled the OS, it would be back to normal now. As it is, I have to reinstall a few things that stopped working afterwards. Most things still work though, so it’s not too bad.

I hope this information helps someone else at some point.

We basically screwed up at work today and there was a whole fiasco. It happens from time to time and it always sucks when it does. On days like this I just have to remind myself that no one’s lives are at stake and no matter how bad we screw up, life goes on. Some people get mad over things like this, but I tend to think that’s mostly people that have someone else getting mad at them over it. Well that, and some people are just crazy and get mad over every little thing. I still get mad or frustrated or annoyed for no good reason sometimes, but I try hard to not let things get to me too much. Stress is a killer.

Vida’s doing much better now in case you were worried. She’ll be on crutches for the next month or so still, but the worst of it is over. She’s still complaining about being on the couch all the time, but Days of Our Lives is keeping her company.

Vida had surgery on her ankle on Wednesday afternoon and I’ve been nursing her since then. She’s been in a great deal of pain even with the extra-powerful pain pills she’s been taking every 4 hours. She’s also been having trouble keeping down food of pretty much any kind.

I’ve been finding it very difficult to watch her in such pain. It’s making me be uncharacteristically emotional. She’s being the strong one. I’ve been doing what I can to make sure she has what she needs to be as comfortable as possible. I’ve been on vacation for the past 2 days so I could do that, but I’m going to be working tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes.

She was in pain pretty much constantly for 4 months before this surgery, so it is a good thing overall. Once she’s all healed up, she’ll be back to normal. It’s only been a day and a half so far and I’m assuming it’s going to get easier. I hope so, anyway. phew!

I just saw the 1983 movie, The Outsiders. It features a whole slew of people who went on to become stars. It’s the story of a rivalry between the poor greasers from the north side of town and the rich socs (as in ‘social’) from the south side. Everyone but me had already seen it, I think.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the value of life and the importance of living each day as much like you want to as you can get away with. There’s always going to be things you don’t want to do that you just have to do, but there’s also going to be plenty of times you can spend any way you want. Make those ‘any way you want’ times really count. Appreciate what’s around you and take advantage of it.

Ok, sap off. The movie also reminded me of my own high school experience and the lines between different people. Those lines didn’t need to be there, but I guess in some ways they just made everyone a little bit more comfortable. That seems ok to me as long as you see the lines for what they are and don’t come to rely on them. It’s like training wheels on a bicycle… they keep you from skinning your elbows, but they also look sorta stupid and make an annoying noise while you’re riding your bike. So, just think of the training wheels.