from weefee to deeveedee

Although I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable in the computer field, the extent of my know-how is limited to problems I've encountered and have had to solve over the years. Therefore when I'm faced with a new issue, I'm generally at a loss as to what the correct solution might be. But if there's one thing I've learned it's that a lot of computer problems can be solutionned with a small screwdriver and some patience.

For instance, yesterday evening, just as I was preparing to go running, I decided to reinstall Mac OS X to see if it would get rid of the Wifi woes I'd been having on my mac mini for a few days. I thus inserted an installation DVD that came with my Macbook and promptly confirmed that I wanted to start the installation process, which initiated a restart. That's when I got a kinda scary looking error message telling me I was having a kernel panic (or something) and that I should manually restart the computer. Unfortunately two such occurences happened again before I understood that using that particular installation DVD was a BIG mistake. I was now stuck with a DVD that I couldn't eject, yet which caused a fatal error preventing me from even getting past the startup stage. My pseudo-DYI instincts kicked in: I was gonna have to go in the belly of the beast and retrieve the dang DVD myself. After much exertion I managed to open up the mini, unset a few screws and somehow recover the disk, but not without a hint of possible damage to the optical drive (or worse).

Thankfully when I turned on the thing, it started up fine (although still no Internet). I then did what any semi-logical person would've in the first place and inserted the installation DVD that came with the computer. By then it was 10pm and going running was, frustratingly, out of the equation. Still the install process seemed to go fine, and after 40+ minutes, I had the computer back to the state I'd bought it in. Well, save for a few scratches on the top from my screwdriver artistry.

The moral of the story ? Well, I'm still having Wifi issues (could it be any other way ?), but at least I know what to do if some CD or DVD decides to spend some quality time in my DVD drive. That Macguyver fella was right: you can do a whole lot with a screwdriver, and most of them are awesome.