Computer Stuff

You read the previous post, right? Wherein Josh The Very Nice Apple Tech Support Guy suggested that I swap out my AirPort card for Matt's, to see what the behaviors of the assorted cards would be in the assorted machines, as a diagnostic, right?

....Right. Would you like to guess what happened? Go on. Give it a whirl.

Matt got home from work (I didn't want to screw with his machine when he wasn't home) and shut down his machine so I could operate. (I've done AirPort card installation before; he hasn't. It's all a matter of experience.)

I went looking for my computer screwdriver, couldn't find it, and took my Swiss Army Knife off my keychain as an acceptable substitute. Tied my hair back (hair + circuit boards = pain in the ass) and pulled my computer out of my briefcase and set it on the table. I opened it up (waking it from "sleep" mode) and prepared to actually shut it off. (Something I haven't done since I installed OS X about a month ago - I've rebooted, but not actually shut down.)

I had a thought. Let's turn AirPort back on, I thought, just so I can keep an eye on it when I boot back in. So I turned it on. Indicator: Grey. (I can't find a base station!) I was reaching for the trackpad to shut down when the indicator changed: Four bars of black. (Holy shit we're right ON TOP of the base station!)

Well, it had flickered on and off before, a bit. Just to be sure, I thought, I'll watch for a few minutes and make sure it goes back to acting flaky.

I watched for a little bit.

And a little bit longer.

It dipped from four bars to three - still pretty good signal detection.

I watched for a bit longer.

It went back up to four bars.

That kind of back and forth is what it does on a regular basis. Not the weird detection-loss that was happening last night.

It's been running now (as I type!) for twenty-five minutes. It hasn't flickered off once. Last night it wouldn't stay on for more than about forty-five seconds.

I'm not always the sharpest knife in the block, but, um... If the Bad Behavior isn't consistent/reproducible in my machine, then there doesn't seem to be much point in seeing if it will happen in Matt's.

Who knows? Maybe it was just a glitch. What I'm going to do now is try to duplicate the behavior I had last night - namely, I'm going to put this movie in and watch the last 45 minutes or so. Maybe it's a heat thing that caused it to break temporarily. (Doesn't seem likely, since it should have cooled off amply by this morning, but...) Maybe it reset when I pulled it out and plugged it back in earlier today, and just needed to be turned off for a while in order to reset. Maybe it was just in a bad mood.

Who knows?

Not me.

If it breaks again, I'll do the test with Matt's computer. If it doesn't... I'll chalk it up to Just One Of Those Things.

And buy Matt some ice cream or something to apologize for the temper tantrum I had about it last night.