It turns out that my iBook's video chip on the logic board had the same problem encountered in July, so the machine is off to the repair shop for a week or so. :-(

Apple says that a poor solder joint causes this. It heats up and partially melts so the connection gets loose and the video fails. I took the iBook into the Apple store and the guy there confirmed it immediately, although it surprised him when I told him that the same problem had been repaired in July.

At least he didn't charge me for the repair, even though the warranty has expired, and the machine will come back straight to the house.


On top of this, our lovely ComCast cable company's broadband service failed Tuesday night and almost all day yesterday. Talking to them on the phone, they convinced me and themselves that the cable modem had died since it was not getting signal and they had no service outages; they then dispatched someone to bring a new one.

I thought a dead modem unlikely, so I took the it outside and plugged it directly into the wire coming from the street, and got signal. That seemed to indicate a problem with the wiring under the house (maybe a rodent chewed it or the cable just went bad) and I called them and told them this new finding.

An hour later they called to say they had suddenly discovered a service outage in my area.

Duh.

Imagine that. The customer might be right. I love ComCast.

(I am not sure why, though, I got signal from the wire outside the house but not from within during the testing. It doesn't make sense. Maybe that mode of testing isn't valid, but the modem found signal out there.)


And as I write this, I'm waiting for my ISP to investigate a problem with my on-line game. One of its Perl modules has suddenly stopped working. I don't know why. The ISP has re-installed it but no change so far. They're now looking at the log files. My guess is that they made some system change or upgraded versions and didn't bother to tell me.