No more swimming in circles, no more confusion about which way to go. I feel like shouting “LAND HO!” yes! If I just lost you, please read “My Own Personal Helm’s Deep.” You can jump to paragraph 5, which will put the “land ho” comment into context.

Things have suddenly come into focus. New adventures ahead! I’ll be posting various “adventures in… (who knows)” soon.

Till then, always remember pixels are not people. Translation: Social networking can be a good thing, but it’s not true Community. If it were, God would not have walked with Adam and Eve during the cool of the day. He would have made them His Facebook friends.

hello...

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles…. guess what happened last night?!?–and this morning, actually.

Let me explain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up: It was as if Miracle Max was saying to me “It just so happens that your friend here (pointing to my laptop) is only MOSTLY dead.”

You see, last night one of my sons asked to borrow my Macbook Pro. He and his friends needed another computer so they could play online games together.

Why not?, I thought. Soon I’ll be ripping its guts out anyway. What could he do to it, melt the logic board?

So he logs in with his account (his, not mine, mind you) and suddenly says, “Hey dad! Look! The display problem is gone.” Son of a widget, he was right!

This meant there was no way it was a hardware issue. The problem had to be somewhere within my account’s preferences. So, this morning dutifully brought the laptop to one of the Geniuses as they had asked me to do last Thursday. But before we dove into more hardware diagnostics, I told him what happened last night.

“Sounds like your preferences to me,” he said. So I asked, “What if I deleted all of my .plist files in my account?” It’s a bit of overkill, sure, but I didn’t want to mess around trying to find the which preference was causing the problem.

“Any harm in that?”, I asked.

“Nope,” he replied, “that should do it all right.”

Sure enough, as soon as I deleted all of my .plist files under my account, voila! The case was solve-ed. 

The moral of the story: You rush a miracle man (or Genius), you get rotten miracles.

But the fact that they were rather booked up last Thursday was exactly why they asked me to bring it back today–so they could take a more careful, more thorough look and talk it over, etc.

And the real moral of the story for me is: don’t despair.

Sure, it could have turned out differently, like actually needing a new logic board, or worse. The important thing is that this little issue flushed the dragon out into the open. God made me see who I am, so He could help me work through it.

PS: I also think this was a case of the Real Jesus saying to me “see, that piece of your paper Jesus, the one that says ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Look at Me, look carefully. Now do you believe that?”

I think I’m starting to.

There I sat, working on my PMP class, trying to ignore the lousy display/text issue, when I noticed my Macbook Pro’s fans. Hmmm… that’s odd. Why can I hear them? Are they speeding up? Sure enough, according to iStat pro, their RPMs were climbing. Then rather suddenly, the little beasties got so loud that the laptop resembled a jump-jet attempting to lift off from my desk! The CPU heat climbed dramatically, utilization pegged–and stayed there! And I wasn’t running anything! Honest!

In the midst of all this, the operating system froze up. I had to do a forced shutdown. When I powered it back up, it went right back into crazy-mode again! I was able to do some quick analysis and noticed that the mdimportserver was acting like a demon, virtually possessing the entire computer (it’s CPU utilization was 98%).

I shut the laptop off again, went to another computer and called upon the greatest sage of our time for help (Google) and found… a solution. Yes! Rebuild the Spotlight database and all will be hunky dory again. Sure enough, that solved the problem.

Oh, and by the way, in the midst of all this, you would have been so proud of my demeanor. Calm, at peace, knowing that God is in control, that He cares about my eternity and that trials like this are good for me…. NOT!!

Man, was I fuming, and mad and … well, you would think that after the way things turned out yesterday I would be better at slaying the dragon within, but nooOOooOoo..  Oh, man. It was bad. I said in my last article that the dragon never really goes away; he just looks for a new opportunity (that is to say, I’m still quite capable of reverting back to my old self). I meant it, but I didn’t really believe it. 

When it was all over I felt pretty stupid for how I reacted. You would think by the way I felt during this little “crisis,” that I truly had abandoned all hope. After all, I was sure that this must be related to the logic board issue, that my laptop is about to do a China Syndrome on me, that God has abandoned me and doomed me to computer h-e-double toothpicks. Once again, a classic case of my head knowledge failing me. When my Paper Jesus gets dinged by little trials like this, that’s when I revert back to being a dragon.

She’s a Macbook Pro, elegant stainless steel case, gorgeous video screen, excellent track pad, and everything “just works.”

I love the sound of my MBP booting up in the morning. It’s the smell er… sound… of techno-victory. I can journal, I can read, I can research, I can webcam my buddy’s favorite beach (lucky stiff…). The world is my oyster! (as long as it has a valid URL).

But as I moved the mouse down to the dock to launch an application, something didn’t seem right. I blinked and rubbed my eyes–there must be something in them. I tried the mouse again. Hmmm. that’s not right, I thought as I absentmindedly took another hit of java.

The edges of the dock icons, they look a little jagged, and cheap. Never the less, I tried to ignore it and opened an application and began to type. The letters. They seem slightly distorted. Ah!! It’s getting worse! No doubt about it now. The characters now look like a blotchy page from a cheap typewriter (remember those? me neither. But I did some research and it all came back to me. I found a link for you, in case you’re into ancient history –>  The Typewriter)

I started feeling light headed. Don’t panic! This is no time to panic. Actually, it’s a perfectly good time to panic!! I have a huge amount of work to do for a web seminar in a few days and on top of that, I’m teaching 11 count ‘em 11 days of PMP training!

Immediately I did some research, thinking that it could be a video driver issue. Just find a new and improved driver, download it, install it, and all shall be well again. After all, I fixed a veritable army of non Apple computers that way in the past. This should be easy. Nothing to worry about.

No good. All my research pointed to a Hardware problem (read: Mucho $$$’s !!). But wait! It’s probably the video chip. Apple is replacing the chip for free. Cool! I’m saved!

“Buzz! Hah! You’re alive! This is great! Oh, I’m saved! I’m saved! Steve–I mean Andy– will find you here. He’ll take us back can tell everyone…that this was all just a big mistake. Right? Buddy?”

So, this was all just a mistake, right Mac Buddy???  I immediately set up an appointment with a Genius, raced off to the store and…… found out that it’s not the video chip after all. Looks like it’s the logic board.

And of course the warranty expired a few months ago, because I didn’t purchase an extended care deal when I had the chance. Why should I, I thought. It’s a Mac. Highest quality in the world. I won’t need any of that. I’ll take good care of my laptop (and I have, believe me, I have)… and it will take good care of me.

I accepted the news as politely as possible that even under the best of circumstances this was going to cost, I mean really cost.

I waited till I got into my car until I had speaks with my superior:

GOD!!!! What in the #@)$U*  *&#$#)@ ##!!~~@# (&* # !!_!)$!*$ @# !*(!@)# are You doing!!! I can’t even afford new shocks for this car, much less pour mass quantities of cash into a laptop that was supposed to be the best money could buy!

I was mad. fist shaking, steering wheel pounding, yell into the windshield, mad. When I started up the car the “Passion: Everything Glorious” CD came blaring into my ears. I hit the off button, Wham! The last thing I want to hear right now is someone singing “how awesome is the Lord most high…”

At that point, I would not have minded becoming a bit of a dragon.

In fact, I would have rather enjoyed it: talons slashing, eyes blazing, “fire” shooting from my mouth, scorching and cutting any enemy in my way. OH!!! The words I could have spewed out!

Driving home down one of the poorest excuses for a road ever (bitter Chicago winters have done a serious number on this road), cursing at every pot hole that took a bone jarring shot at my tires, I was mad. Just plain mad.

Passing by a horse farm on the right and a marshy/woody wildlife preserve on the left, somehow I grit my teeth and said “Lord, I know the truth. I don’t feel it but I know it.” What was that truth? That God is far more concerned with my soul than with my comfort. He loves me too much to leave me the way I am. The question is: will I cooperate? So I grit my teeth and said,”my conscience requires me to say ‘yes’….”

And I forced myself to remember that this little trial is nothing, it’s embarrassingly small compared to say, losing a limb at the hands of those who are suppose to protect not pillage, compared to rape or starvation or filthy water or war raging all around.

I couldn’t manufacture a change of heart. And frankly, after all these years, I’ve learned that it’s stupid to try. So I just said, “here. Here it is. My heart. Do something with it.” or words to that effect. And then, while still pretty miffed, I did my best to drop the subject and try to get on with my day.

I could not have been more than about 4 minutes, kid you not, when gradually, like a slowly thawing stream of water, my heart changed.

My laptop is still a mess (sometimes I can’t quite make out the letters of this article as I type them). My car still needs new shocks, my kitchen faucet still leaks, the bills still come in, I’m still in a fog about life, but…… I know, I mean I really KNOW that God has my eternity in mind. He really does love me too much to leave me in my present state.

It took a “serious” problem with my laptop to show me that lurking beneath the surface of this supposedly nice, amiable, laid back exterior is a dragon, still very eager to burst out and spew “fire” all over anyone and anything that causes it pain.

I guess it’s worth the hassle (and the fear of where in the world am I going to get the money to fix this) if that’s what it takes to draw out into the open (and “slay”) the dragon. And of course, this is hardly the end. Dragons have a way of resurrecting themselves (actually, I think they play dead for a while, lulling me into thinking they are gone for good, then Wham! out they come!)

While turning onto my street, I turned the CD player back on. This time I listened, agreed in my head–and my heart continued to thaw out. A line in the song struck me. This is the key, I thought. This is what I need to keep my eye on. The line went like this: Where You send us, God we will go…

Somehow, when I keep my eye on going where ever God wants to send me, then all my little problems just don’t seem so big any more.

It was time to pull into the garage, and time to conciously serve my family. By the time I got out of the car, I actually felt ready.

“Hi honey. How was your morning?” I asked.