Are You Still There, My Gremlins?

I have been running my Mac Pro and the Cintiq with the bootable drive that has 10.5.3 in it for three days straight now.  Previously, I installed the latest driver from Wacom, which I posted here, but it still crashed, which I ranted about here and here.  

I was just hating it. Here’s a typical stare down between me and the darn things:

That’s a genuine frown over there!  Too bad it was taken in profile; had I taken a frontal view, you could have seen the walnut-crushing crow’s feet on my forehead!

I was running on 10.5.1 when I got an email from Wacom Support suggesting a fix. They said that from the crash log files that I sent them they found some haxies and that I should remove them because these are what probably is causing my crashes.

From my short stint googling for information, these haxies are probably from something called Application Enhancer, a third party app that, well, as the name suggested, enhances some apps. Haha, you can judge by my expert explanation how knowledgeable I am about that!

Anyway, it was worth a try to seek out these so called “haxies” and remove them from my system. I booted up to the 10.5.3 running and threw caution to the wind. I googled a “how to remove haxies” and tried the procedures from some of the hits that I found, but I was having a hard time finding the folders or files that point to them in my System file.  Apparently, they do not exist in my current configuration. Remember, I reinstalled Mac OS X.  Whatever app that had these probably are not there anymore.

I was not taking any chances, however, and decided to dig some more.  I found a way to remove them but I had to do it at the Terminal level.  The article can be found here.  I had to use the command line to remove whatever application enhancement software I had on my Mac.  It was some really scary stuff for me because I have not done anything of that sort.  However, after completing the procedure, I was able to safely reboot the Mac Pro and proceeded to do my work.

I have been running at it for three days straight and I had no crash so far.  Hmmm, could it be that that was the solution?

Coincidentally, Apple released another update, 10.5.4!  I have not done any software update yet, but I probably will.  I have been sending all the crash reports to Apple and maybe they took some notice and did a fix?  What wishful thinking!  But I will do a software update and will try to see how far this thing will go.

I intend to do a timeline of all this things once I finally find that everything has been ironed out (if at all). Everything right now is looking surprisingly good so far.  If it goes on like this for another week, I will probably update the other hard drive, the one I intended to be my start up disk which was running problem free under 10.5.1, to get it up to speed.

Well, knock on wood!

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Getting My Groove Back

There’s more going on behind the scenes here than me just sitting in front of my workstation working and my Mac Pro and Cintiq refusing to play nice with each other.  One of them is that I started to pick up playing the guitar once more.

I am just a novice, mind you.  I started to learn how to play sometime in 1993.  During that time, I really wanted to learn how to play so that anytime I hang out with my pals, we had something to sing along to.  So I bought me a second hand acoustic guitar and started learning some chords.  I soon got adept with it that I became ambitious and started learning how to play some guitar solos with an electric guitar.  I bought all the tabs and guitar magazines that I could find and I would spend hours in my room trying to learn how to play the guitar solos that I liked from Guns N’ Roses and the riffs that I liked from Metallica.  I also played some Nirvana; they are so easy to learn because all you have to do is pick up three chords and strum the guitar like crazy!

My interests soon turned to the Blues.  I would dig through all the magazines that I own and look for blues solos.  I never got to totally mastering how to play it, but it is something that I would really like to plunge into should I really get serious.

My love affair with the guitar ended when I finally hooked up with my future wife, Liza.  Both my guitars started gathering dusts so I sold them, albeit with a heavy heart.  Fast forward to the present and I am so swamped with work that sometimes I need some diversion to keep my sanity, so I decided to pick up where I left off and get myself back to guitar playing.

I started out with an acoustic guitar once again, but soon the itch came back and I just had to get an electric one:

 

The acoustic guitar is an Art & Lutherie Dreadnought Series Almond 6-String.  I got it from a guitar shop that was recommended to me by my brother-in-law.  I had to read a lot of reviews before settling with this model.  I always preferred the steel stringed guitar rather than the nylon stringed one.  What I got sounded great for my needs, plus it was very affordable.

It took me a while to get my chops back, but after playing with it for a number of weeks, I suddenly had the urge to go rockin’ and decided to finally get an electric guitar.  Once more, it took me a lot of browsing for reviews before I finally decided on an ESP LTD Standard Series EC400VF Electric Guitar in Tabacco Finish:

I liked the Les Paul style of this guitar.  My previous electric guitar, the one I sold back in the Philippines, was an Epiphone Les Paul Standard, hence my preference for this body style.  Compared to the Epiphone, I found that this ESP is surprisingly easy to play!  The set up from the factory out of the box was just right! The neck had the right thinness to it, the string action are just the right height, and it looked and sounded great too!  Plus, it was more affordable than the real Gibson Les Paul, which costs something I would not dare tell my wife.

I also had to get an amplifier:

This one is a Fender GDEC Junior. What’s nice about this amplifier is that its got built in drum loops that you can play along with, great for practicing! It also has built in guitar effects, sparing me from buying a separate stomp box. What a nice little amp!

Anytime I needed a short break from work, I would turn on the amp and pick up my guitar and play me the tunes that I know how to play. I am still a novice, but for my small audience consisting of me, I think I sounded great!  

I’ll never end up playing on stage, though.

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Hello, Crash.

Well, what do you know.  I just posted something about waiting for the inevitable crash and I had one.

It’s really sad.

Anyone out there who knows how to solve this issue, I would welcome it.  I just could not get any from Wacom Support, so I am throwing it out there.

Meanwhile, I’ll still continue working with this configuration and try to get as many crash report as I can the whole day and then revert back to my crash-free configuration.

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So Far, So Good…Really?

I mentioned in a previous post that while running my new configuration in line with troubleshooting all the crashes that I have been having with the Mac Pro, Adobe Flash CS3, and the Wacom Cintiq, that I was not getting any error messages from the Console anymore.

That is not entirely true as of this Sunday morning.

When I opened up the Console to see if everything was fine, lo and behold, it was filled up with messages again, and some of these are the same ones that I used to see before, messages from the configuration that crashed a lot.

Oh well, there goes my rising confidence.  It’s slowly sagging once again and I work in constant vigilance, always worried that this configuration will crash too anytime soon.

To it’s credit, this current configuration was incident free since I started working with it yesterday morning. I was at it for 8 hours straight.

Crossing fingers and knocking on wood.  That is where all this issues has come to.  Sigh.

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So Far, So Good…

For the past three hours this early morning of Saturday, I’ve been working with bated breath, risking a full blown crash once again now that I am running Mac OS X 10.5.3 and the Cintiq with the new Wacom Tablet Driver that was just released.  I have cloned my crash-free volume of Mac OS X, the one running 10.5.1 with no incident for five days, and in that cloned volume, I updated the software to 10.5.3.  I’ve also downloaded all the latest updates for Flash CS3.  And then I downloaded and installed that release candidate tablet driver from Wacom.

So far, so good.

It looks very promising.  I have opened the Console and found no error messages so far.  When I started launching the Console during those crashes, the Console would churn out a lot of messages.  Now, it is all clear.  Can it be that the gremlins have been chased away?

For documentation’s sake, here is what I have done:  I’ve reinstalled Mac OS X on a new hard drive.  I made a fresh install of Adobe Flash CS3 and the latest Wacom Tablet driver of that moment, Driver 6.05-3 for Mac OS X. Initially, I did not do any software updates whatsoever to both OS X and Adobe Flash CS3, electing to run the configuration for a number of days to see if a crash will occur.  I encountered none.

Enter Friday, where I got a heads up from a reader of this blog that a new driver has been released, Driver 6.08-2 (RC) for Mac OS X.  I decided to bite the bullet and do some Software Updating to see if I will be lucky.

First, I did a Repair Disk Permission to the crash free, 10.5.1 running harddrive.

Once Repair Disk Permission was completed, I restarted my machine.

I then used Super Duper to clone that harddrive to the other volume that contained that troublesome configuration, virtually erasing it.

Once the cloning was complete, I booted using the harddrive containing that cloned version.

I immediately removed all Tablet preferences and then removed the Wacom Tablet Driver.

I did a Software Update for Mac OS X and installed 10.5.3.

I then downloaded all the latest updates for Adobe Flash CS3.

Once these two were completely updated, I then downloaded that latest Wacom Tablet Driver and installed it.

As I’ve said before, I have been using it for some three hours, incident free and, from looking at the Console messages, error free.

The new driver might have fixed the issue.  Installing all the latest updates for both Mac OS X and Adobe Flash CS3 seems to have smoothed out everything too, Adobe Flash CS3 in particular, for  I remember dismissing and canceling one or two software update notices for Adobe Flash in the last few weeks because I did not wanted to be interrupted with my ongoing work.  That must have been my mistake and may have been one of the many reasons why these crashes have been occurring.

So with crossed-fingers, I look forward to working for the next few days with this current configuration and settings.

Better get back to work.  Let’s see if I am correct with these assumptions.  Wish me luck!

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Getting Into The Nitty Gritty.

Now that I have finished my animation and posing assignment for this week (and before I start working on next week’s workload this weekend) I’ve decided to do some nitty gritty trouble shooting stuff to clear my issues with the Mac Pro and the Cintiq.

I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that there was a new driver for the Wacom. It is still in release candidate version, not the final version yet. But that has not stopped me from trying it out.

I’ve cloned my crash-free Mac OS X version, the one that has been running trouble free for almost five days since I downgraded, into another hard drive. I’ve booted into that hard drive and did a software update to Mac OS X to bring it up to 10.5.3 once again.

I also software updated Flash CS3 to make sure that that too is in its latest version and boy, does the update take a lot of time! Earlier before and during those mishaps with the Cintiq, I’ve cancelled most of the updates. To cover all the bases, I intend to make sure I have all these updates installed.

Once I’ve completed that, I will remove the existing tablet driver, do a repair disk permission on this hard drive and then download and install that release candidate Wacom Tablet driver. I intend to run this set up this weekend and see if I can make it through the day without crashing.

I just have to have 10.5.3. I have applications that only run in that version of Mac OS X such as Aperture 2, my Raw Photo editing tool. I have several pictures in my camera waiting to be downloaded, post processed and posted! There were a lot of going-ons behind the scenes that I was not able to share because of this Mac Pro/Cintiq issue that took up most of the space in this month’s postings.

Until then, have a great weekend!

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Wacom Releases New Tablet Driver.

Reader Bryan commented on my post where I downgraded from Mac OS X 10.5.3 to 10.5.1 just so I could work with the Cintiq crash-free. Bryan also put to my attention the availability of a new Wacom Tablet Driver that can be found here.

The driver is in what’s called a release candidate, meaning it is not the final version.  

I am hesitant to try this out right away as I am in a midst of a deadline.  But once I get some breathing space, I will install this on my other hard drive that has 10.5.3 installed in it and run it through it’s paces.

I am also looking up reviews on this driver to see if anyone having the same issue as mine have used it already and has gotten some positive results.

Plus, I am hoping that Wacom Support will reply back to me and refer to this driver as a possible solution to my problems.  So far, they have only asked for the crash report logs and have not replied back since.

My sincerest thanks to Bryan for bringing this to my attention!

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Goodbye, Van.

Our 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan finally got sold yesterday, June 18.

We had to let it go.  My wife and I leased a smaller car, a Honda Civic, so that she can have something smaller to practice her driving with.  Since we now use the Honda on our daily commute to her work and back, the van ended up parked on the sidewalk.  We get to use it occasionally, but it made no sense keeping two vehicles in the family when one car will do.  Another note is that gasoline prices are starting to rise; the Honda would be more economical for us than the six cylinder engined Caravan.

I am not that sad to see the van go, but I just had to point out what that car represented in our life. We were able to buy that van just four months after arriving here in Canada.  Brand new!  It’s very significant because back home in the Philippines I could not ever imagine being able to afford to buy one.  In fact, it is considered a luxury vehicle in my home country.  If the dollar value here in Canada is converted to Philippine Pesos, the van’s purchase price would amount to a value with a “Million” on it.  That’s a lot of money from where I came from!  It only goes to show how fortunate my wife and I have become ever since we moved to Canada.

Our First Baby after taking delivery, circa 2005:

The van has what’s called the Stow ‘N Go seats.  This meant that the second and third row seats could be folded and stowed away into the floor of the van, leaving a very flat surface.  This proved very useful and handy when we had to haul stuff around.  When we first came here in Calgary, we had to stay with my sister-in-law for a while and when it was time for us to move to our own house, the Caravan and it’s flexible seating feature had enough space and room to swallow all our belongings, saving us from renting a moving van.  The same goes with filling up our new house with furniture: the van made short work of taking in all those huge IKEA boxes.

We don’t see ourselves moving out to another house anytime soon.  We don’t get to buy anything huge from IKEA too.  We rarely drive my wife’s nephews to school anymore.

Circa 2007:

So thanks, and goodbye van.  You have been a very steady, extremely useful and reliable driving companion.  I am sure your new owner will be very happy with you!

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Interview For My Cool Job.

I did an email interview for Carrie Lowery, who maintains a blog about cool jobs that you can find here.

Carrie asked me for an interview almost two months but I only got to reply back to her just this week. Actually, I made a reply months ago, but for some strange reason that email response did not get to her.  It must have gotten lost when I was in the midst of configuring my email client. It was a good thing she followed up on me about that.  I didn’t mind rewriting my answers because I had fun replying to her email questionnaire.

She has a novel idea for a blog and I frequently visit it.  I get to learn a lot about other cool jobs reading from it.

Here is my plug for MY COOL JOB!  Thanks for featuring me, Carrie!

 

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Downgrade from Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.3 Looking Good.

After so many frustrating crashes with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.3 and Adobe Flash CS3 and the Wacom Cintiq 20WSX’s driver, I decided to revert back to 10.5.1, the original version of the OS when I first got my Mac Pro and the same state of everything the first time I installed the Cintiq.

Everything was done on Sunday.  I’ve worked the whole day of Monday and it was crash free.

I was relieved and a bit pissed at the same time.

Obviously, I was happy I had no incidents yesterday.  I would have pulled my hair out if, after all those configuration, a crash would still occur.

On thing I had to give up with all of this is that some applications do not run on 10.5.1.  One of this application that I have is Aperture 2.  I bought a license for this Raw Photo Editing software a few months ago and when I tried to reinstall it, it would not let me because it says it only runs on 10.5.2.

Now, should I risk upgrading to that version just to run Aperture 2 on the Mac Pro?  I decided not to and instead to install Aperture 2 on my iMac, which has 10.5.3.  I would be sacrificing a lot of processing power, but I only use Aperture on occasion and not full time.

So there is my initial impressions.  I don’t know if I have come up with the complete solution to my issues.  It’s not strange for me to be running an older version of Leopard because I do hear a lot of Mac users who refuses to do an update lest that new update breaks something.  In my case, it did, big time!

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