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Okay it didn’t really almost die but I was a little worried when it wouldn’t start up. It all started when I was logging off of WoW and the app just hung there. I force quit and went about doing things. Next time I tried to start WoW…it wouldn’t start. So after a couple tries I restarted the iMac. That’s where things got bad. The gray screen popped up like normal and the little loading circle deal was spinning but after about 3 minutes (instead of the 10 seconds like normal) it just kept spinning. I let it sit for a good 5 minutes thinking maybe it was doing something special. That’s when the hard drive got quiet and I thought “Aww WTF?!” I held the power button to turn it off and then tried turning it on again. Nothing.

Now I’ve fixed many computers, more than I can count, so my troubleshooting skills started to kick in. Problem is, I’ve never had any problems with Macs. So I grabbed the OSX install CD from my MacBook and popped it in, booted, and ran Disk Utility. After verifying the disk and then repairing just for safe measure I restart the computer again. No go. Next I tried to reset the PRAM which cleans out the RAM. Nothing. I let it sit there for a good 10 minutes  with no luck. My last shot was to boot with verbose mode on and check out what exactly is happening.

I’ve never watched what exactly happens during boot but I assumed most of what was going on was normal. After a few seconds it got to a line that kept repeating. Over and over and over. The line went something like this:

com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.mDNSResponder[16]): posix_spawnp(“/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder”, …): No such file or directory

Odd right? That’s what I thought. So after a quick Google search I learned something new.

When you set up sharing over a network in OSX it changes the permissions for Everyone to your drives and usually shares your entire hard drive. Well when you delete the share for your hard drive it resets the permissions. Which is what I did a few days before. When you reboot you start running into problems because the system can’t write to important files. Luckily the fix is pretty easy.

The solution:

• Boot into single-user mode (boot while holding down CMD-S)
• Follow the on-screen instructions to mount the file system as read-write (a fsck command followed by a mount command)
• Type the following: “chmod o+r /” followed by “chmod o+x /“
• Type “exit” to leave single user mode and complete the boot sequence.

Hopefully you Mac users out there who are reading this save it or write this down because you never know when you might need it. My iMac is now running again and hopefully it doesn’t try to play anymore games.

You may have noticed I’ve gone missing lately. That’s because instead of spending time in the office where I can work on some websites and tweet a little something every now and again, I spent the week working outside doing some hard labor. @JeradB, @PeterDudek, his son Chandler and I built a deck. Not just any deck. This deck was in the middle of a field so it had to be leveled with blocks and lots of dirt. I haven’t worked this hard since I was on the dairy. Whew.

The Deck

One of my most favorite games has made it’s way onto the iPhone. Wolfenstein 3D. I spent many hours playing this game as a child and have probably beat every episode more than once. If you’re not familiar with the game, you play William “B.J.” Blazkowicz (quite the last name), an Allied spy sent to infiltrate a Nazi fortress to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust. Somehow you got caught and then managed to escape imprisonment but still have to fight your way out.

iPhone Wolfenstein 3D

If you even remotely like games and you’ve never experienced Wolfenstein 3D, I recommend you download it for your iPhone pronto!

Also theres an Easter Egg hidden in the iPhone version. If you tap the screen with four fingers the developer console will pop up allowing you to enter cheats.

Wolfenstein 3D Developer Console

You can enter in the following cheats:

• god — Turns on god mode so you won’t be able to die
• give all — Gives you all the keys to unlock every door, the highest level gun (chain gun), and full ammo

Enjoy!

Here’s my new desktop for April. I found an awesome grungy Portugal flag and decided to change most of my icons to black. Enjoy.

Desktop of the Month: April

And of course…the original.