I took my MBP to a friend's house and it started acting weird. It was very sluggish and things kept locking up. When I got home I ran Disk Utility and found that I had all kinds of permissions problems, and a "Sibling Link Error" that could not be repaired. I Googled the error and tried several options but nothing worked. One of the suggestions that kept coming up was to purchase Disk Warrior. I went to their site and read all of these user emails that claimed that Disk Warrior was incredible. They actually sounded like the company wrote them so I figured it was just marketing. I was skeptical, but I gave it a shot.

At $99 I knew I was rolling the dice but I had no other option. This is a relatively new 500GB disk that I put in my MacBook Pro, and I didn't want to have to reformat. Reformatting is easy, but I'm running PGP Whole Disk Encryption. If I reformatted I would have had to re-encrypt the drive and that takes about 24 hours. So, I went for the $99 solution and it worked. I couldn't believe it. Normally these types of software solutions don't really work, but Disk Warrior actually fixed the drive and it has been running smoothly ever since.

There is a chance that the drive is actually going bad which is why I had a problem in the first place. It could be that Disk Warrior just bought me some time. Normally when drives go bad you hear something though, and I hear nothing. My drive has been running smoothly for several days now so I'm fairly confident it's fine.

Do I think the $99 was worth it? Probably, but I still think it's an overpriced piece of software. They should really charge $49 for it in my opinion. It did work though. I'm a believer in Disk Warrior now!

I purchased a new Seagate 500 GB FreeAgent USB drive thinking I would simply clone my MacBook Pro's HD. I've done it in the past and it worked like a charm, but this time I thought I'd try Time Machine. I have never been able to get Time Machine to work wirelessly, so I basically gave up on it. When I plugged in my external drive and ran Time Machine it went for a couple hours (trying to backup about 300gb of data) then stopped with the following error: "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume."



I Googled "Time Machine Error" and there were tons of people with the same problem. This topic in Apple's Forums had several people complaining of the same issue.

I tried several suggestions like the following:

• Renaming my Backup HD to not include spaces in the name.
  
• Rename my MBP to not include odd character's in its name
  
• Delete the "in progress" file on the backup drive
  
• Reformat my external drive
  
• Check the drive for errors
  
• Reboot the OS
  

None of these worked. What I did next was look at the system log by launching the Console. It's not easy to read so I downloaded these two programs to help:

• Time Machine Error Logger
  
• Time Machine Buddy Widget
  

By looking at the logs through these programs it was obvious that I had one file that could not be copied for some reason. It was a mp4 file of a movie (A Few Good Men). I went to the Time Machine options and excluded that file, ran the backup again, and it worked like a charm.

A couple of things trouble me about this error. First of all, without downloading third party software the error message that Time Machine is of no use. I had no idea why my backup stopped. Secondly, why can't Time Machine just exclude that file and continue while notifying me, or prompt me and give me a choice to continue or not?

In any case I finally got my backup to work. I hope this helps someone.

Are you as sick of the Brett Favre stories as I am? He's at the end of a long career, can no longer do what he used to do, fades towards the end of the season, and yet he's still a story. The constant retiring and un-retiring is covered in the press as indecisiveness, but it appears to me that he simply doesn't want to have to go to training camp. Maybe he thinks he's above it or something. Either way, although he's free to do what he wants, I'm tired of hearing about it.

Next...

I've been having a problem in Gmail where my contact picture was not being saved. It would be there for the session, but if I changed computers or browsers my contact picture would be reset to an old photo that I don't even remember uploading.

Searching for answers yielded nothing but I finally figured something out. I clicked the "older version" link in Gmail. Once in the older version I deleted my contact picture and reuploaded a new one. I saved the new photo and when I went back to the "newer version" all seems fine.

Gmail must have an issue in the "newer version" even though it doesn't seem all that new. I hope this helps someone.

UPDATE: This is not a permanent fix. After a day or so my contact picture was deleted again. C'mon Gmail.

This video says it all.

Are you a CNN person or a FoxNews person? Either way, you're not really getting real unbiased news. Instead of experienced journalists giving us news, we get biased "infotainment" these days. Different networks target different audiences and bring the biased news they feel their audience wants to hear. In the old days real reporters went out and investigated stories, then came back and told us what they found. These days, a pretty face reads stories they think we want to hear off a teleprompter, and the broadcast includes lots of music, flashy graphics, and so-called news alerts. CNN and MSNBC are definitely left of center, while FoxNews is definitely right of center.

It used to be that conservatives felt that mainstream media was biased to the left. They were probably right as most journalists are left of center, but they were just slightly left of center. Since the arrival of FoxNews, other networks have drifted further left to distinguish themselves from Fox, and Fox has drifted to the right. Now, nobody is in the middle.

I find that FoxNews is less biased than other networks for the simple fact that they present both sides even though most of the hosts are right of center. On other networks, the hosts are left of center and they don't provide any opposing view.

What I find troubling about Fox is the way they package the news with music. Since when do we need music for news? I'm so sick of FoxNews Alerts too because they keep running them over and over as if some major piece of news is breaking. Instead it's usually something silly like a car chase, or the arrest of a murder suspect, or something else supposedly tantalizing.

So where do we turn? How can we get nothing but the facts? The simple truth is we can't. Until things change dramatically we'll have to take everything we see on Television with a grain of salt. Someone needs to give us the straight up news and stop giving us what they think we want to hear. That cannot happen because the sad truth is the job of media is not to give us news. Their job is to sell advertising and in order to do that they need to be as popular as they can be.

For the past few weeks I've been having problems with Firefox. I thought it was a Flash issue so I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash. All seemed well, but now every time I go to Yahoo Mail Firefox is sluggish and draggy until I quit and restart it. If I don't visit Yahoo Mail I'm fine. Weird.

Jack Kemp was such a great guy that it's hard to find anyone who didn't like him. You can find people who argued with him, but everyone liked Jack Kemp. He was just a nice guy.

I didn't know Mr. Kemp, but I did share an elevator with him once in Orlando. He was speaking with several young people in front of the elevator while my brother and I waited for the same elevator. He was exactly the same in person and the guy you see on TV. He was electric and animated and it seemed like there was a spotlight on him. Perhaps it was just the white hair and his pressed white shirt and bright blue tie. Whatever it was, he was unique.

I had no idea he was sick and his death came as such a shock. I'll simply say, we need more people in the world like Jack Kemp.

Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party is troubling because he is only looking out for himself. Doesn't anyone care that our politicians only care about themselves, and not the people they represent?

Mr. Specter is 79 years old and has been in the senate a very long time. Why not just retire? I was on a flight with Mr. Specter from Philadelphia to Chicago last year and I was shocked at how old he looked. On TV he looks good, but in the airport he walked very slowly and was hunched over like an old man. Why can't he just let go and retire? Ego, lust for power, and greed come to mind. In any other profession people would expect him to retire but in politics, we accept just about anything.

Mr. Specter admits that he was about to lose a Republican primary race so he simply switched parties to save his own butt. Joe Lieberman did a similar thing last year when he switched to become an independent. Why do the American people put up with this kind of behavior? We need to stop electing people on celebrity and popularity. We need to elect leaders with skills. We've already elected a President based on celebrity and now we have an ex-Senator as President, an ex-Senator as Vice President, and an ex-First Lady who became an ex-Senator as Secretary of State. What have all these senators brought us? A big mess. We need people who have actually run something to lead our government. Instead we just settle on a popularity contest.

Oh well, Arlen Specter is just another example of a politician looking out for himself. I have an idea for all the politicians out there. Get a real job like the rest of us.

Someone sent this to me in an email. It speaks for itself.

What can I say, Obama is just like every other politician. He's full of it. After blasting President Bush and accusing him of "undermined the Constitution," President Obama now realizes that President Bush was correct in keeping the secrets around the Terrorist Surveillance program and is fighting the same lawsuit that President Bush fought. What does this prove? It proves that we cannot trust what candidates say in a campaign. Obama did not have all the facts in the campaign yet he chose to blast Bush for things he now agrees with. He took cheap shots at Bush for political gain.

Read the article for the particulars, but the bottom line is we need to stop electing people based on celebrity, and what they say in a campaign. We need to elect people who have a record of accomplishments. Most Senators don't have to run anything so they don't make good managers. We need to elect someone who has done something like run a state, or a military department, or a small or large business. Someone who knows what they are doing.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, please vote for people based on a record of accomplishments and not celebrity or campaign rhetoric.

I know what you're thinking. "Are you crazy? Mac is so much better than Windows." That may be true, but there are a few things that I wish my Mac could do the way Windows does it.

1. Alt + Tab
I really miss my Alt + Tab keystrokes in Windows. I got it to work on my Mac with a third party program called Witch, but it should be built in to the OS. You can do a Command + Tab in Mac OS X, but that doesn't bring up a program that may be running but is minimized to the Dock.

2. Apple Menu as Start Menu
Wasn't there an Apple Menu in the old Mac OS's that acted like the Windows Start Menu? Sometimes I want to be able to launch a program from a menu and not from the Dock. I downloaded a program called Butler to make it happen, but again it should be built into the OS.

3. Menus appear in Window
I don't like the way Mac has one master menu at the top of the screen that changes as you change applications. I think it makes much more sense to have a menu in each window.

4. Ability to Move the Apple Menu
This may be possible, but I don't know of a way to do it What if I want the menu on the bottom of the screen? I don't, but somebody might want that.

5. Stop relying on applications like iPhoto
I prefer to browser my pictures in the Finder window and not in iPhoto. I can do that on my Mac, but if I'm trying to import a photo into an iMovie project I can't just grab it from a folder. I have to import it into iPhoto first. That's lame.

6. Write to NTFS drives natively
I really wish Mac would support writing to NTFS drives more easily. I can write to them with a third party hack, or by placing the drive on my network but it would be much easier to be able to plug in an external drive and write to it.

7. Permanently delete files without the trash
There is no easy way to delete a file from your desktop (or anywhere else) without first placing it in the Trash. I like to keep some files in Trash in case I need them, but other large files I want to delete immediately. There's no easy way to do it on the Mac. The way I do it now is to drop it on the Shredder, but that takes awhile. I also launch Terminal and type the command:

rm -f -r

and then drag the file that I want into the Terminal window. That gets rid of the file but it shouldn't be that difficult. Holding Shift +Del in Windows gets rid of the file immediately.

8. Delete Key
I don't like that there is no delete key in Mac. Holding down Function with the Delete key works, but that's an extra stroke that would be made easier with a delete key.

9. Clicking in the address bar of an Internet browser
I don't like the way Mac selects text in my Internet browser. In Windows, if I click in the address field the entire field is selected automatically so I can simply type a new address. I Mac, I click in the address field and the cursor is at the beginning of the line. A double-click then selects what Mac perceives to be a word and I have to triple click to get the whole thing selected. Lame.

10. Home Key
I miss the home key. Sometimes I want to select a line of text and in Windows I can hold down Shift + Home to do it. In Mac you can do it with Shift + Command + Arrow Key, but I've found that it doesn't always work. It seems to be application specific and some apps don't support it for some reason.

I noticed my default applications were getting reset in Mac OS X Leopard every time I reboot. It turns out that FileVault has a bug in it which causes all default applications to be reset. I found the answer at the Related Link below.

I've had a situation where large files are in my Mac's Trash folder, but I cannot delete it because I do not have sufficient permissions. I tried to create a new folder on my desktop and move the files there but I couldn't do that either. I searched and finally found this snippet from Apple's Support site.


Emptying the Trash

In some circumstances, folders for which you do not have write permission can end up in the Trash; and you will not be able to delete them or the files contained in them. Remember that in Mac OS X there is not a single Trash folder. Instead, each user has a Trash folder in their home directory (named ".Trash"). There is also a Trash folder for the startup volume, and Trash folders for other volumes or disks. When a user throws away a file on a local non-startup volume, the name of the folder on that volume is "/.Trashes/UID", where UID is the user ID number of the user (which may be seen in NetInfo Manager). In either case, all Trash folders are hidden from the user in the Finder. In these situations you can either start up into Mac OS 9 to locate the files and delete them, or you can use the Terminal application. Issues with emptying the Trash are much less likely to occur in Mac OS X 10.2 or later, since the Finder empties the Trash as the root user. However, issues may still occur with files on remote volumes for which your local root user has no special privileges.

Warning: Typographical error or misuse of the "rm -rf" command can result in data loss. Insertion of a space in the wrong place could result in the complete deletion of data on your hard disk, for example. You may wish to copy and paste the commands below into a text editor to verify spacing. Follow these steps to delete Trash for the logged-in user:

1. Open the Terminal application.
2. Type: sudo rm -rf
Note: Type a space after "-rf". The command does not work without the space. Do not press Return until Step 6.
3. Open your Trash.
4. Choose Select All from the Edit menu.
5. Drag all of your Trash into the Terminal window. This causes the Terminal window to automatically fill in the name and location of each item in your Trash.
6. Press Return.

All of the items in your Trash are deleted. As an alternative method, you may execute these commands. The second and third commands will delete Trash belonging to other users. The commands are:

Warning: Typographical error or misuse of the "rm -rf" command can result in data loss. Insertion of a space in the wrong place could result in the complete deletion of data on your hard disk, for example. You may wish to copy and paste the commands below into a text editor to verify spacing.

Important: There is no space between "/" and ".Trash" or ".Trashes" below.

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/
sudo rm -rf /.Trashes/
sudo rm -rf /Volumes//.Trashes/

Note: To end the sudo session, you should either execute the exit command, or log out of Mac OS X and then log back in.

Respectively, this permanently deletes all files in the current user's Trash, the startup volume Trash, and the Trash for other volumes (if any). These commands cannot delete locked files. You have to unlock them first.

Note: The sudo command can be used to temporarily obtain super user status and change permissions on files that otherwise could not be changed. However, it is only available if you are logged in with an administrator account, and it requires an administrator account user password for authentication.

I've been using FileZilla lately after FTP Voyager started to give me problems. FileZilla is okay, but it does not support WebDAV. I need WebDAV so I could access my Mac iDisk from my Windows PC but unfortunately not many FTP clients support the WebDAV protocol.

I finally found BitKinex which supports WebDAV quite nicely. It turns out they used to charge for BitKinex but now it is freeware.

Finally a client that allows me to connect to my Mac iDisk from Windows, without using Explorer. This is much faster!

I've been messing around with Tumblr tonight. I can't believe how interesting it is. It's like Twitter for Blogs. You follow other blogs in the same way you follow people on Twitter.

You can also post to your blog in a variety of ways. You can go to the Tumblr web site of course. You can also post via a Mac dashboard widget. You can email or IM a post to your blog through AIM. How about calling in and recording an audio post for our blog? You can do that too. I predict great things for Tumblr.

Moving your blog to Wordpress? Wordpress allows you to import your Blogger Blog, but not if you're hosting the blog on your own server. I searched all over the web for the answer and simply couldn't find it. I found a lot of people asking how to do this, but no definitive answer. Well, here's the answer:

Temporarily switch your Blogger Blog back to blogspot.com hosting and then import your Blog with Wordpress. It actually works.

There is one small catch that I ran into. When I switched my Blog back to SFTP hosting, it changed my legacy template just a bit. I couldn't get it back to the way it was. Blogger is apparently using a different code to get their navbar at the top of the blog, and that code messed me up a bit. I did get my Blog imported into Wordpress though.

Does Apple know there is a recession going on? Apparently they're not concerned about losing customers because according to reports, Apple is about to raise the price of premium tracks on iTunes to $1.29.

I've been using FTP Voyager for years, but recently it started to give me problems. My uploads were slow and the program kept crashing. I tried to download a new version, but uploading was disabled so I could not test it out.

After weeks of frusration I did a search online and found FileZilla. Not bad at all. I configured it to look just like FTP Voyager with the remote window on the top and local on the bottom and I'm good to go. There aren't as many features as FTP Voyager, but it's close enough. I'm sold on this free software!

I've been a frustrated fan of the Palm Treo since its inception. I've had every model of the Palm Treo at one time or another, in addition to various other Pocket PC phones, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. I keep going back to the Treo because despite its faults, I like the power it has to do what I need to do. I also really like having a touchscreen device with a keyboard. With a little program called "PushEffect" I have push email just like a BlackBerry, but without depending on RIM's servers to stay up.

As much as I like my Treo I'm extremely frustrated by the bugs. I've heard of other people having to return their Treos because they "just died." I've never had that experience as I've always been able to bring mine back to life. With that said, I did have to hard reset mine a few times. That's why I always keep a backup of my data on my microSD card. Anyone with a Treo 800w or Treo Pro should have a microSD card with a backup of your data on it. Contacts are no problem as you can simply resync with Outlook, but all the programs that you've installed will be wiped if you have to hard reset.

Please Palm...make sure the Pre is a better device (fewer bugs) than the Treo. And for goodness sake, start making slightly larger screens. My Treo screen is soooo small. While other handset makers are doing with larger screen Palm seems to be stuck on the small screen. Get with it Palm! We want a top smartphone.

I've been having a problem with Google Docs recently. Their import engine is as strong as it could be. I've been sending a Word document back and forth with a friend; each of us making changes. When the last version arrived in my Gmail account I tried to view it as a Google document. The import engine could not decipher between the different versions of the file. Microsoft Word saves past edits so you can track changes to the document, but Google Docs got mixed up and included all the edits.

I'm sure they'll work out the kinks at Google Docs, but until then I'm sticking with Word.

Are you a Google fanatic? Do you like their products (Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, etc.)? Google is developing new products so fast it's hard to keep up. I have one suggestion for them though. Hire some designers from Apple.

Google doesn't pay enough attention to the user experience. They seem to feel that as long as the product works, that's good enough. Take Gmail for example. Doesn't it seem dull? They don't space the messages from the headers very well. The first line is the header and then one space and you're into the message. Apple would never do it that way. You know how Apple makes it so obvious where things are. They present you with exactly what you need when you need it. That is what Google is lacking in most of their products.

I love Google, but they need to pay attention to the user experience. Hire some people from Apple and you'll be set!

The U.S. House today passed a bill that would tax AIG employees who received bonuses of over $250k. The tax rate is 90%. Are you kidding me? This is your government run-a-muck.

The US Congress should not be in the business of passing bills directed at single companies, or short-term micro issues. The bonuses at AIG aren't politically palatable, but this congress passed the bill that allowed those bonuses in the first place. To now come back and try to pass a bill taking back money they already authorized is silly, and likely unconstitutional.

This reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case where the U.S. Congress tried to pass a quick law to fix a perceived short term problem. The U.S. Congress should focus on passing laws that protect all of us. These single issue bills are nothing more than those in power trying to flex their political muscles.

I've been playing with Gmail's "YouTube previews in mail" labs feature. When someone sends me a YouTube link I can now watch the video in Gmail without having to launch a new browser window. They have similar preview features for Picasa and Flickr too.

If Gmail would only get rid of the "on behalf of" xsender header, and use a x-sender header instead, they'd really have something going.

I've been watching AIG CEO Edward Liddy testify before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises. He is taking heat from the congressmen over some employess receiving retention bonuses from AIG. Because AIG received a loan from the government, the representatives are upset about the so called bonuses.

What the representatives fail to realize is that these bonuses were crucial in convincing some people to stay at AIG, knowing their job would eventually be eliminated. Had the bonuses not been put in place many of the employees would have simply left to find other work, and AIG would be in a worse position.

The representatives seem to be grandstanding for the cameras and grilling Mr. Liddy who receives no pay from AIG, and has no financial incentive to do anything unseemly.

Have you ever noticed in these hearings that the Representatives or Senators are there for their camera time, and then they just leave? Are they not interested in hearing the other questioner's questions? Of course not.

Twitter is such a cool little app, but how will they monetize it? At this point nobody knows, but several options are out there. They could charge companies to build apps on the Twitter backend, or they could send out advertisements as tweets (that won't fly). They could place an ad after your tweet, but somehow I think people won't want to receive ads in their tweets. Whatever they decide they will surely make a killing.

The guys at Twitter have apparently rebuffed a $500 million offer from Facebook so someone thinks it is worth something. My guess is Twitter will be sold and someone else will have to figure out how to monetize it. Evan Williams will walk away with a bundle and move on to another project. First Blogger, then Twitter. What will the next app be? Maybe just a site called "er."

Mike Rowe from Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs demonstrates how to to a "burpee." This workout is great for small spaces and really works.

This site popped up today. It lists all things Christian and claims to be another jobs site for Christians?

iGoChristian is a partner of the website started by Stephen M. Newman, author of Experiencing Worship Study.

I saw Dick Cheney on CNN Today. He has gotten a bum rap in recent years. Yes you can question the decisions he made, but he made those decisions under very difficult circumstances. I've always liked his calm, measured approach to problem solving. He may not have gotten all the calls right, but history will probably say he got more right than wrong.

Interestingly it seems things got heated between him at George W. when Bush refused to pardon Scooter Libby. Cheney refused to give details, but it seems that there may have been some heated conversations.

I just installed Twirl for my Tweets. Looks good so far!

I've been playing with Joomla this weekend. We've always built our own CMS but I finally gave in and tried Joomla. It's a very robust CMS and widely used. It's a little slow when setting up, but it does make creating a manageable web site fairly easy. They have lots of plugins to do just about anything you want to do. If you're a novice, or an expert who wants to get something up and running quickly, give it a try.

Is everyone you know on Facebook? Yeah, me too. Have you tried getting your business or web site on Facebook? Tried creating a page? Forget it. It is simply the most confusing and poorly coded site I've ever seen. You never know what page you're on, all the important links are way too small, they don't make things obvious. It's a complete waste of time.

Use it to find your old flames but forget it if you're trying to drive traffic to your business web site. If you think you want to take the leap and try it, be prepared to be frustrated!

It sure seems like it.

Churches looking for the right pastor, or ministers looking for their next calling can all benefit from ChurchJobs.net.  The website for matching churches and candidates has current church jobs from all over the country.  You an do a nationwide search for your next pastor.  Head on over to ChurchJobs.net to find pastor jobs.

So many other sites are popping up these days, but ChurchJobs.net does it best. They are straightforward and to the point, and focus on connecting churches with candidates. They keep advertisements out of the way and to a minimum so you can focus on finding the right position.

You can add a job, or add your resume if you are a candidate. You can even choose jobs by denomination like Baptist or Methodist.

The folks at ChurchJobs.net are always helpful and respond to inquiries quickly.  I highly recommend the site, as well as other sites they run.

If you're interested in hiring a music copyist you can check out MusicEngravers.com.

Musicians might find the following forums helpful if you use Cakewalk Sonar.  The Cakewalk Forum will help you get assistance and support from other users.

Check out these friends.  You won't be disappointed, especially if you're looking for church staffing help.

Why can't the politicians get it? They are growing the size of our government beyond what we are capable of maintaining. Bush spent us into the poor house and now Obama wants to double down on that achievement? We're headed for massive inflation and a decade of stagnation. No doubt!