Buffle the Wonder-Duck
Woke up this morning, ate me some breakfast, and settled down on the couch with Buffle to get some work done. Fantasy read-alikes, this week’s class lecture, more on the ASIST poster…
Kernel panic.
Reboot. Kernel panic. Reboot again. Kernel panic. Try to reboot from the install DVD. Kernel panic. In desperation, hit up Google (from husband’s machine) and learn how to reboot into single-user mode. Do so. Run fsck, which comes up clean. Reboot. Kernel panic.
A very patient friend to whom I now owe substantial quantities of good booze reminded me about target disk mode and walked me through backing up my home directory to my husband’s machine. Crisis demoted to emergency, I tried the next trick: reinstalling OS X to Buffle in target mode from my husband’s machine.
In one of those brainstorms that always happens ten seconds too late, I realized five seconds after I booted my husband’s machine from Buffle’s install DVD that Buffle is an Intel Mac and my husband’s machine is a G5, and never the twain shall use the same install DVD. My husband’s machine promptly kernel-panicked, and wouldn’t restart from disk instead of DVD, either. Nor could I eject the DVD.
Just then, Buffle the Wonder-Duck earned its sobriquet. In desperation, I tried one more time to boot it, and it booted, and I slammed my husband’s machine into target disk mode and ejected the DVD. Husband’s machine fixed, I turned my attention back to Buffle the Wonder-Duck—
—which promptly kernel-panicked.
I hopped on the crosstown bus to Madison’s Apple Store and bellied up to the Genius Bar. The Genius on duty tried not to wince at the words “kernel panic,” tried a few diagnostics that didn’t work, and popped the case on hearing that I had third-party RAM installed. “Oh,” he said. “These aren’t even installed right.” He shoved them in, and lo and behold, Buffle was fine.
My weekend’s work is shot to hell, of course, so I’m taking the day off work tomorrow to get caught up. But three cheers for smart friends, the Genius Bar, and Buffle the Wonder-Duck!