Lost Explained, Plumbers, Travertine Marble, and Macs

There have been so many theories on LOST, I've lost track. This one which I found via Stumble-Upon today is absolutely stellar. It works. Makes sense. It's a very long post so make sure you have time to read and think. It's got some holes but I really, really, like this one.

Today, the plumber came to fix the ballcock on my guest bathroom toilet. Actually he replaced the whole mechanism because it had a small leak. I only mention this because it's not often you get to say ballcock when there's not a dirty joke involved. I wish I could work in a badminton reference and say shuttlecock. I can't. So I won't say shuttlecock.

My shower work is done. My three day semi-expensive job turned into a ten day long ordeal. However, the old shower was ripped out. The leaky shower-pan was replaced -- and a good thing because it was developing a mould collection. The new shower has authentic travertine marble tiling. I like it except for the light fixture (which I'll replace) and the door (too short for my tastes). I am pleased, though. I missed being in my bathroom because it was just weird being the guest bathroom for so long.

My new Mac is chugging along nicely except for the firewire issue. What firewire issue you may ask. Well let me tell you then :) An edited version of what I sent to Apple's Engineering Department:

I thought it was just me having problems but then I've since had other friends with similar problems. We have a technology provider that deals directly with Apple an I spoke the Apple Rep. A few days later they called back and confirmed there ARE problems on a wide scale and they're "checking into the cause but are leaning towards the monitor having faulty hardware."

Now, on to the nitty-gritty. This bug manifests itself as follows.

To rule out other issues, ALL OTHER EXTERNAL DEVICES BOTH USB AND FIREWIRE (except mouse and keyboard obviously) were removed from the chain: CPU, Monitor, Hubs, everything.

This problem is specifically related to the 23" new cinema display and the firewire port/hub built in to the new Intel 2x4core3.2ghz. This machine is about a week old as is the monitor. Hot off the press. All external devices were previously plugged into a dual-core G5 with similar specifications and functioned normally.

What happened is that if you plug the monitor into the rear firewire ports an external firewire HD (800 or 400) will eventually overload the system and disable the entire firewire bus on ALL ports. I tried two different external firewire drives (on the 400 and 800 ports in front and back of the machine with NOTHING plugged into the monitor but the monitor plugged into the machine's rear port (tried both ports). I also tried various cables.

Apparently the internals of the machine have one shared bus and even though the system is powered it can't handle an external drive. The drive in question is one of the 1-TB Western Digitals (I'm not using their drivers -- just the default Apple stuff).

When you access the external drive and open it, you get the root directory for that drive, but then when you open a folder the drive over-spins and then powers down. Checking in System Profiler shows that the Firewire Bus cannot be read. All firewire devices stop working. You must POWER DOWN THE SYSTEM to recover. Moving down to 400 didn't help.

I tried this with two different Firewire Drives. Happily the data was not too badly damaged by the unexpected power down. DiskWarrior to the rescue.

At first I thought I had an isolated incident with my specific machine or monitor being bad which is when I slowly begin trying to isolate it by removing equipment from the equation. (I have firewire external Sony AIT, iOmega ZIP, Memorex DVD+RW drives in addition to the HD. Since USB is unaffected I left those out of the equation and unplugged).

So after narrowing it down to the monitor and hard drive, I went to Google (gotta love Google because it knows everything) and typed the error message about the bus being unreadable. There are *TONS* of matches and everyone is having firewire bus problems but nobody has apparently isolated it yet. But it's my observation and gut feeling that there is an endemic problem with the monitor's firewire using too much power from the machine *OR* the machine's firewire bus is insufficiently powered. The fact that it powered down the drive and rendered the bus dead supports this hypothesis. (Or, more likely, a combination of an issue between the Mac and the monitor.)

This information is VERY good and solid and tested carefully. It's not perfectly tested but Apple ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY has an issue. The hard drive worked fine on my G5 Mac (2x2ghz) in the same FW800 port with ALL the above devices attached. That rules out the machine handily.

Continued testing causes repeated bus power downs and will continue to damage my hard drive which is why I don't want to keep testing my drive.

It's some sport of an electrical issue with bus power over your firewire chain. I suspect that with all those ports on the machine plus the monitor added in, the stress is too much and it gives up.

I will, shortly, have a lot more Mac hardware for sale including (possibly) a Cinema Display, a Dual Processor G5, and more. Contact me for details.

Wherefore art thou Eric J. Hedlund?

So, every now and again I like to check up on my "missing" friends -- you know the people you lost contact with but you wish you hadn't. I guess it's sort of nostalgic. There aren't that many that I've lost touch with that I wish I could reconnect with, but there are a few. One, Eric, was just an amazing person. I really liked him for all sorts of reasons. I met him when he was around 14 or so and I was in my early 20s (here's a picture).

He ended up, last I checked, as the editor of the newspaper in Taos, New Mexico. Every now and then I'd go check over there, read some of his articles, and feel a little more connected. I sent an email to him a few months ago and it bounced. Then I found a notice saying that he'd left the paper because he decided to leave Taos entirely. So now I've lost contact. I feel surprisingly saddened by this -- despite the fact I haven't spoken to him in many, many years. He hasn't updated his blog in over a year.

A few years ago one of his friends e-mailed me as a result of this blog, so I thought I'd post this here in the remote hope it happens again. Eric's not the only one I think about, but he's one of very few. I miss Dee, but sadly, she's dead. There were some other people too, but I've managed to reconnect with them via e-mail and/or IM and such (Randy, Carey, for instance). I don't count the people I've tried to reconnect with but have met with reluctance or resistance (Josh, Rob H).

Heroes vs Lost

I read this blog post today and it prompted me to write my own. The aforementioned blog discusses the merits of Heroes vs Lost. We all have our opinions, and as such I feel obligated to deliver mine.

But first let's discuss the shows. Lost has and always will have a cooler concept. The whole idea of being Lost somewhere in another time/place/dimension is creepy especially now that there's a few seasons behind us, I think it's safe to say Lost has a lot more promise. Heroes is, and only aspires to be, a comic book. There's nothing wrong with that at all. And, in fact, Heroes delivers what it pomises where as Lost has lost its way. That's not quite true actually, Lost has not become lost, but it has become inconsistent.

I am going to use the same grading scale as The Jay did in his blog and provide my own commentary and answers. Don't get me wrong, I loved Jay's post enough to make my own commentary. I just think his answers aren't all correct. Let's see how it works out.

Better Central Concept (Advantage – Lost): As I said above, Heroes is a comic book and aspires to be nothing more or less. That's not bad, but Lost aspires to be many things on many levels. We're discussing the concept and not the execution of the concept. That's a key difference and Jay blew it there.

Least Annoyingly Self-righteous Male Lead with a Background in Medicine and Emotionally Unavailable Fathers (Advantage – Lost): Wow, an easy one. I have to say Jack is less annoying than Peter because Peter is whiney and annoying whereas Jack is just annoying. They share self-doubt at times, though expressed in different ways. But if you wanted to have one guy at your back, I think we'd all pick Jack.

Hotter Resident Slamming Hottie (Advantage: Heroes): This isn’t a tough one, claims Jay but he blew the answer. Evangeline Lilly versus Hayden Panettiere -- you have got to go with Hayden because all guys really want a cheerleader even if she isn't quite 18 yet. This isn't about execution -- it's about desire. We've all had that cheerleader fantasy. Don't deny it. It's a guy thing. I gotta' teach this Jay guy about surveys. We're answering the questions honestly.

Cooler Mysteriously Creepy Older White Guy (Advantage: Lost): Locke was a top notch bad ass. I agree, Jay because Locke is the opposite of Bennet (H.R.G.) -- both are creepy and in retrospect HRG is a better guy. And it comes down to who would you trust? Bennet, of course. Which is why Locke wins hands down because we just haven't figured him out yet.

Cooler Long-haired, Bearded Rebel (Advantage: Lost): This is a no-brainer. Sawyer is in a class all by himself.

Better Villain (Advantage: Lost): Sylar is a psychopath and Ben is a psychopath. Sylar, however, is a boring psychopath whereas Ben is fucking creepy yet interesting. There's a fine line between evil and cliché and evil and fascinating. Sylar's a comic book character and we can't forget it, but with Ben it's hard to remember he's not real. Besides, Sylar looks like Peter Petrelli and Ben looks like Hannibal Lechter which is a double bonus.

Least Offensive Asian Stereotype (Advantage: Lost): I love Hiro Nakamura to death and he's so freaking cool but I keep thinking of some old stereotypical Asian cartoon character going "Meesta Magloo, Meesta Magloo." Whereas both Korean characters on Lost are just normal people who speak Korean. I have to give this to Lost even though I like Hiro better.

Most Interesting Set of Numbers (Advantage: Lost): Lost has “4 8 15 16 23 42”, and everyone wants to know what they mean. Heroes doesn't have numbers.

Least Offensive Middle Eastern Stereotype (Advantage: Heroes): Mohinder is boring and Sayid is really interesting. Yeah, we all get that. They are both stereotypes of a sort. But Mohinder is probably supposed to be Indian and he's not selling Slurpees and driving a cab, so that's a plus. Sayid is into that whole torture thing, something he excels at too. So, this is close but Mohinder is least likely to offend.

Cooler Silent African Dude (Advantage: Tie): I have no comment and agree with Jay. I'd give a slight edge to Eko only because he talked and as such we could learn about him.

Better Young Black Kid With Special Powers and Bad Dad’s (Advantage: Heroes): Hell yeah. This one's easy. Michael (Walt's dad) was irritating and I'm glad we've possibly seen the last of him. Micah's dad is not so interesting but he doesn't irritate me -- or maybe it's didn't now? But if you had to have a cool little kid brother, who would you pick? Micah or Walt? Right. Nobody picked Walt. Nobody.

Better Audience Desirability a.k.a. Which show would you rather be a character on? (Advantage: Heroes): Easy. If you're on Lost, you're a red-shirt and will die.

Better Blonde Femme Fatale / Least Useless Eye Candy (Advantage: Heroes): This category is also no-contest. Although one of my least favourite characters, Niki and Jessica are interesting and Lost's best effort was Shannon and now Juliette. Only Juliette doesn't interest me as eye candy, though her character is kinda' cool. I'm going with the Freud-experiment twins.

More Quotable One-Word Catchphrase (Advantage: Tie): Neither of these shows has anything worthwhile. However Heroes has a better tagline this year "Save the cheerleader, save the world." I'd give this to Heroes but it doesn't satisfy the question.

Most Annoying, Most Annoying Character (Advantage: Heroes): Jay blew this one. Charlie's a good actor, a complex character, and everybody's favourite little hobbit. Oh, shit, there aren't hobbits on the island? Damn. Well that mucks it up quite a bit. My problem with Heroes is there are so many characters I don't like: the cop, the twin-psycho bitch, and so on. Based on sheer quantity of irritating characters, this goes to Heroes.

Which show gives the better goods? (Advantage: Tie): Wow. A toughie. So many questions and so few answers. Heroes delivers more answers and replaces them with new questions while Lost just makes new questions and doesn't really answer many. This is a hard call because this is very personal and it's what makes a show work (or not) for a person.

So after reading all this you'd think, wow Eric prefers Lost over Heroes. That's what the numbers say. But, that shows you how valuable any survey really is. If I could watch one and only one of the two shows next season, I'd pick Heroes without a doubt. No hesitation. Numbers lie.