PowerBook stuck on an endless loop


Yesterday I applied the latest updates available from Apple to my PowerBook, and for some reason or another something went awfully wrong..

The updates that killed (temporarily) my PowerBook were: Security Update 2008-002 and the Safari 3.1 Update. After the combine 100MB+ download, Leopard asked to restart, like it always does. Thinking not much of it, I said go ahead and thats when everything went crazy..

The updates seemed to installed correctly, but one thing caught my attention: Instead of carrying out the install with the normal blue background, it was been done with the Leopard "cosmic" backdrop, "Odd".. I thought..

It took a while to restart..and then grey Apple screen, a restart, grey Apple screen, a restart, so on and so forth. Things didn't look good at all. Couldn't boot into Single User Mode, nor Verbose Mode. Things were definitely looking bad. Left it as it was overnight, decided to deal with it later on the next day.

Today I got my OSX Disk out and booted off the DVD. Did the usual repair disk/permissions savior moves, no dice. Only thing left to do... Archive and Install..

So I went ahead and took that route and I gotta say I'm happily back home. Sure I gotta install a crap load of updates again, and today, my internet is acting extremely SLOOOOOWWW. Nevertheless, its god to be back within OSX with all my files and apps intact.

What cause this? I am not too sure. I would say that mysterious "Safe Mode" boot that happened once out of nowhere had something to do with it. Hopefully it was just "one of those days.." Lets see if when I update back again everything is nice and dandy..

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Posted by Sebastian at 3/19/2008 04:32:00 PM | 14 comments read on

Remove that warning message within MSN Messenger on OSX


Never give out your password or credit card number in an instant message conversation. To help prevent infection by a computer virus or worm, never accept or open any file or link in an instant message until you verify its authenticity with the sender.

The first time I saw that warning message while trying to IM somebody, I thought to myself: "Awww how thoughtful of you Microsoft, looking out for me like that.." The second time it was more like "Yea man..I know". By the third time, I was looking desperately within the prefereences to turn that annoying message off.

Turns out you can't turn the message off by conventional means. I guess Microsoft believes that Messenger users have the memory span of a Goldfish, hence the ongoing warning message "feature". Fed-up of been treated like a Goldfish, I decided to finally get rid of that annoying warning message..

  1. Make sure MSN Messenger isn't running.
  2. Go to the MSN Messenger.app inside your Applications folder, and select it.
  3. Right-click (Control-Click for some), then select Show Package Contents.
  4. Navigate your way from folder to folder: Contents > Resources .
  5. Double-click on the folder that corresponds to the language you currently use. For me: English.lproj
  6. Find the file: InstantMessageWindow.strings
  7. Right-click (Control-Click for some), then select Open With > Other..
  8. Choose TextEdit and hit Open
  9. Scroll-down till you reach the line that starts with IMWarning = "
  10. Delete all the text inside the quotes. the end result should be IMWarning = "";
  11. Save the file and relaunch Messenger.
  12. Enjoy the lack of that pesky warning message.

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Posted by Sebastian at 3/10/2008 11:46:00 AM | 10 comments read on

Meanwhile on Twitterland..