College Decision Time: A visit to UC Santa Barbara

It’s getting down to the wire for Jeff’s college decision. The schools which are still in the running (I think) are (in no particular order) Willamette, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, Tulane, and the University of Oregon, though he hasn’t given anywhere (UC Riverside and American) an official “no” yet.

We spent yesterday at UCSB’s “Spring Insight”, a one-day open house where they try to have people available to answer your questions and, I guess, limit the disruption to normal activities.

Things I learned about UCSB:

  • Political Science is a somewhat impacted major. History isn’t. In History, AP credits can be used to place out of at least some survey classes, or you can use them as general credits and take the surveys.

  • UCSB offers many orientation sessions throughout the summer, so planning vacations should be no problem.

  • Academic advising is done at both the college and the major levels. A lot of it is done by students (at least at the college level), and you have to pursue it because it may not be required. You should do it at least once a year.

  • Housing is only guaranteed for the first year; most students move off-campus by third year (and a good many move for second year). If you live on-campus, you must have a meal plan (10, 14, and 19-meal options are available) which is good at any of the four dining commons but is not good at the restaurants in the University Center. The dorms (at least the one we saw) have tiny kitchenettes on each hall. Many of the dorms are actually off-campus. Dorms are co-ed by hall; bathrooms are single-sex.

  • Bike theft is the big crime on campus (we were told about it three separate times!). This is the first campus we’ve visited without security callboxes all over the place; they have a well-used escort service.

  • Wireless access is spotty on campus, though they hope to build it out. The library is not 24-hours, but there is a 24-hour study room (often used for groups) on the ground floor of the library.

  • Greek life is a major part of the campus but not dominant.

  • Although UCSB is supposed to have a stunning campus, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the buildings. The view of the lagoon was nice, but that was about it.

  • For future visitors to a Spring Insight event: 7,000 visitors tax the campus pretty severely.

    • It’s best not to follow the herd to parking but to find the first available lot and park. We bailed out on the long line leading to the closest structure and went back to Lot 18; it probably saved us ten minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic and was only a few steps farther away.

    • We made the mistake of trying to have lunch in the University Center at Panda Express. We spent 45 minutes in line. It would probably have been faster to walk to Isla Vista (which we didn’t get to see) and eat at one of the restaurants there.

Next stop: UC Davis.

When “It Just Works” becomes inoperative

Last Friday, I discovered that I couldn’t synch my iPod with my MacBook Pro. The iPod thought it was connected, but the Mac didn’t; oddly enough, I was able to synch my iPhone just fine.

Rebooting the iPod didn’t help, so I decided to reboot the Mac. It didn’t want to go down gracefully for some reason (it kept complaining about programs not ending), so I finally brought up a terminal window and typed “sudo shutdown -r now” to force a reboot.

That was a mistake. I got a big Do-Not-Enter sign on the screen. Repeatedly. So I booted the install DVD and ran Disk Utility to verify the drive — it had no complaints.

Back to booting the disk — this time in Verbose mode (press Apple-V right after the power switch, keep it pressed until the bong sounds). The first attempt was a complete failure; it couldn’t load mach.kernel. But I persevered (it’s not like I had a choice), and got farther — to the point that I started seeing “disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (Undefined)” errors on screen, each of which was accompanied by a long pause.

A quick visit to Google told me that the disk was failing if not already dead (which undoubtedly explained my many spinning beachballs and failures to shutdown over the past few days). So I decided to go home and see if I could rescue any data before taking the machine into the shop.

At home, I connected the system to my Mac mini and brought it up in Firewire Disk Mode (press and hold “T” right after powering on) and managed to recover most of my home directory before it was time for my appointment with a Genius at the Apple Store.

The Genius asked me what I’d done and then suggested I try a reboot while he watched, not in verbose mode. 15 minutes later, the system was up. He then suggested I:

  1. Take the machine home without rebooting
  2. Make a copy of the disk on an external drive
  3. Use Disk Utility to write zeros on the hard drive so that it would assign alternate sectors
  4. Reinstall the OS
  5. Move data back to the machine
  6. Get on with my life

He was half right.

I used SuperDuper! to clone the drive. It took three tries, extending well into Saturday night, before I was able to get a complete copy made.

Then I ran Disk Utility in “secure erase” mode to zero out the drive, reinstalled Leopard, and started the long process of moving things back from the external drive. I was suspicious of the integrity of the copy, so I didn’t move any binaries back, just my data — that meant reinstalling many programs and getting them back up to date (Microsoft Office 2004 was especially pernicious, requiring me to run the updater at least 8 times).

But by late Sunday, I was finished.

On Tuesday, though, I started seeing spinning beachballs again. By Wednesday morning, they were frequent. And a perusal of /var/log/system.log showed more “disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (Undefined)” errors. So I knew I had to have the disk replaced, which was going to be a problem, because the Genius had told me that it would take 4-7 business days, which would extend into an upcoming trip.

The machine was out of warranty, so I could have fixed it myself, but life is too short for that. And since it was the company’s machine, not mine, I really wanted to take it to an authorized servicer. But 4-7 days was unacceptable. Fortunately, there are alternatives to the Apple Store, listed right on the Apple site.

I called the closest one, ClickAway and was speaking to a tech within a few minutes. He said that they’d happily install a new drive (which they’d sell me or I could pick up at Fry’s) the same day. And they’d try to recover the data, or they could sell me a SATA case for $25 so I could do it myself (and then wipe the drive afterwards).

And they did just that. They even installed Leopard for free, saving me the trouble of doing it from the DVD. And they finished two hours earlier than they’d estimated. And the price of the whole process, including the SATA case and a larger drive than I’d originally had, was just about the same as just getting the drive swapped for an identical drive at the Apple Store.

I still had to reinstall and reupdate my software again and put my data back on. But I’ve gotten good at that.

Lessons Learned:

  • Backups are good.
  • Backups before the drive fails are better.
  • Even if all your “important” data is on multiple machines, backups are good.
  • Image backups are very good.
  • Geniuses are not always right.

I now also have a Time Capsule, which is busily backing up my Mac mini as I speak (I’ve already backed up the MBP). I wish the mini were close enough to connect it through a cable, because an over-the-air backup of 300MB takes a very long time.

And I’ve registered my copy of SuperDuper!
to make image backups easier in the future. $27.95 is cheap insurance — and I already have used the program to save my butt, so it’s even retroactive insurance (hey, it works for Warren Buffett, so why not for me?).