Twev1701.net

I had an issue with my Intel Mac Mini randomly rebooting last week. It always seemed to be when I was watching a video. I thought it was my video card again, so I rebooted and reset my PRAM. (reboot holding CMD + OPTION + P + R until you hear the boot chime a 2nd time) I had to do this when I upgraded my monitor from a 19” to a 24”, and went from a screen resolution of 1280×1024 to 1920×1200. But this did not fix my issue. What really annoyed me was that my screen saver (Electric Sheep) would throw artifacts and then freeze the entire machine. After 2 days of trying to trouble shoot this, I finally had a new symptom to look at – my external HD, which holds my music collection in one partition and my Time Machine backups in another, would not re-mount. After some fooling around, I finally got my music partition to show up by not my Time Machine partition.

I went into the Utilities folder in OS X and ran Disk Utility. I tried to verify my external HD but it would not verify my Time Machine partition. I then tried to fix the drive, and again, it failed to recognize my Time Machine partition. Seeing this many times before, I knew the drive was in the throws of failure. I turn off the drive via its external enclosure and moved on with my day.

However, something else as bothering me about the situation. I wasn’t convinced 100% that my video problem were caused by the external HD. I knew after seeing the drive fail diagnostics that this was the cause for my random reboots. But, I was unconvinced that the drive would cause my machine to reboot during video playback or make my screen saver freeze. In my research I had come across a lot of articles about machines overheating, especially during heavy loads. I never thought of playing a few YouTube videos has being a ‘heavy load’ so I never gave it a second thought. Not content with blaming the HD for everything, I went back to those articles and did some more research.

The first thing I noticed was that most articles stated that their Mac Minis ran idle at a temperature of about 50-55C. Idle, my machine was running at 67C. I wasn’t sure why mine was running so hot. I even have the Mini sitting on its side so the air vents are 100% unobstructed. Doing some more reading on the subject, I came across a few articles on fan speed. I’ve never used a fan speed control program on my Mac. Looking at my fan speed via iStat Pro, it was running at a steady 1500RPM. Most people recommended running the internal fan at a minimum of 2000RPM. Trying out several recommended free programs, I liked one called Fan Control the best. It gave me all the options I wanted and was quite transparent. I set the minimum fan speed to 2000RPM while the CPU is running above 50C, and set the maximum temperature I will allow the system to run at to 80C. This is well under the specs given by Intel for my processor, but better safe than sorry in my book. After about 10 minutes with the new Fan Control setting, my Mac’s CPU temperature was down to 64C under normal load. Letting the system sit idle for about 20 minutes with no programs running yielded amazing results. My Mac was now running at a steady 44C-46C idle temperature. I was very happy about this. I never thought a little free utility program would make such a difference.

For the record, here are the stats of my Mac Mini.

BTW, I ordered a replacement external HD as well. A Western Digital Elements 1TB external HD is on its way yo me as we speak.

This week has had moments of sheer awesomeness, and moments of total suckage.

I had this past weekend off, and I had a most awesome weekend. Jess and I spent Saturday afternoon at Claws N Paws animal park. We got to feed some of the animals and walk around in near perfect weather. After we left the park, we grabbed a bite to eat at a diner and then headed to a bar to meet some of our friends for drinks.

Sunday was a nice relaxing day as well. Jess had work in the early afternoon, so I took Loki to Kirby Park in the morning and we went for a nice 4mi walk. He loved walking someplace new! Afterwards, we came back to the house, and then met Jess at my parent’s house for a Mother’s Day cookout. All good there.

Monday wasn’t too bad at work. There was lot’s to do, but that’s just the status quo. When things started to suck was Monday night when I could feel myself getting sick. It ended up being a quite annoying stomach bug. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it was nasty.

Tuesday saw me not wanting to get up to go to work. I was feeling like crap, but I was ignoring it for the most part since we were having an ultrasound that day. Also, I was only working ½ a day at work, so again, not too bad there. The ultrasound ended up being totally amazing! The first picture we got of the baby was him waving at the monitor. I guess I kind of just have it away there, but yes, we found out we are having a boy! We are officially having a baby boy named Jackson Shafer in October. Here are some pictures of him from Tuesday’s ultrasound.

Tuesday night I was feeling pretty sick. I woke up Wednesday and felt even worse. I ended up getting up at 7:30am, calling off, and going back to bed. I did not wake up again until 3:30pm. I pretty much spent the day lounging and trying to keep things down. I was finally starting to feel a little better around midnight, so I decided this would be a good time to head to bed. It was around then that I heard tires screeching and a bunch of bangs. Long story short, a drunk driver hit my sister’s car, bounced off of it, and ended up buried in the neighbor’s bushes. I got to spend the next hour with the cops instead of sleeping. Oh joy.

Thursday saw me waking up feeling just as crappy as I did on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I was out of sick time and needed to go in. However, on my way in I made an agreement with myself that I would take it easy and not let myself get stressed out. I am happy to report that I was able to do just that. I had a great night, got some stuff done, and did not stress out once. I came home to a very domesticated wife who had gone on a baby clothes shopping spree. Showing me her bounty, she went to bed and I retired to the couch to watch some Stargate Atlantis. After 1 ½ episodes, I ended up falling asleep. I woke up, and hauled my ass to bed for the night.

That brings us to today. Today hasn’t been that bad so far. Then again, I have only been awake for about 90 minutes or so. I close once again tonight (2-11) which is no surprise there. It seems all I do anymore is close. My only regret about closing tonight is that it’s beautiful out and I would love to take Loki for another walk at Kirby Park. Unfortunately, he’s going to have to wait until Sunday for such a thing to happen.

I can say with certainty that life is good!

I took a sick day today as I seem to be loosing a battle with a little stomach bug I picked up somewhere. It’s an annoying little sucker where I am either A) On the toilet crapping my brains out or B) Thinking I’m about to burp only to throw up in my mouth. Yeah, no fun there with either symptom.

So, I decided to burn through a sick day today and rest up a bit. We have plenty of coverage in my department today so I have no worries there. Just need to relax a bit today and take it easy.

I have a better, more eventful post coming later. No vomit or poop in that one!