Kibbles & Bytes Blog

This summer’s “*Garage Sale*”:http://www.smalldog.com/garagesale promises to be *the biggest EVER.* We have listed the most items we have ever added that are bargain-priced for your viewing pleasure.

Look for top brands (such as Edifier, Griffin, Timbuk2, iHome and more) and top products like speakers, cases, headphones and more for your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod or other device!

Since that’s a lot of stuff (literally), here are some featured lots that we know you’ll want to check out. Some “highlights of the haul,” so to speak.

*Lot A002 New – Edifier Bric IF330 Plus – 1 $55.00*
*Lot A003 New – Logitech S315i Rechargeable Speaker system – 1 $29.00*
*Lot A084 New – White Apple logo stickers – 8 $1.00*
*Lot A136 New – Apple 80GB Raid Hard – 1 $75.00*
*Lot A160 Used – AT&T Mobile Hotspot – 1 $150.00*
*Lot J015 Demo – STREET by 50 Cent Wired Over-Ear Headphone, Blue – 1 $50*
*Lot J136 New – Belkin Messenger Bag for Notebooks – 4 $23.00*
*Lot L033 New – Trexta Snap On Classic Series – 4 $3.00*

And much more — check out the full spread at “*Smalldog.com/garagesale*”:http://www.smalldog.com/garagesale!

*Remember that all items are first come-first served, and all orders are online only.*

This is a neat little tool I’ve been using for a while. You can essentially turn any song in your iTunes library into a ringtone for your iPhone.

First, you’ll want to pick out the song you’d like to use, and find a good 15-30 second duration that you would like to specifically use for your ringtone. If it’s not the beginning or end of the song, you’ll want to make a note of the start and stop time of the part.

Next, click on the song and press Command + I on your keyboard. Click on the “Options” tab and plug those recorded times in the Start and Stop Time fields (i.e. if you would like to use the first 30 seconds of the song, you would leave the start time at 0:00, and input 0:30 for the stop time). Make sure both check boxes are checked next to “Start Time” and “Stop Time”, and hit “OK”.

With the song still selected in iTunes, click on *Advanced > Create AAC Version* in the menu bar. You should now see a duplicate of that song in your library, one of which has a 30 second duration. Click the newly made AAC version of the song and drag it onto your desktop. Click the file once, then press enter. Now, you’ll need to change the .aac file extension to .m4r (the standard iTunes ringtone file). You should receive a prompt asking if you would like to use the .m4r extension (yes). Your ringtone should now look like: “[song title].m4r”. Drag the file back into iTunes, and it should populate under the “Ringtones” section of your library.

Now, when you plug in your iPhone, you’ll want to check the box next to “Sync Ringtones” (if it’s not already checked) under the “Ringtones” tab. The next time you sync your phone with your iTunes, this ringtone will be uploaded to your device. Lastly, you need to select the song in your iPhone as your ringtone. You can do this under *Settings > Sounds > Ringtone.*

Turn up the volume and enjoy your new ringtone!

Checking in a computer for a variety of issues as described by a customer can provide more issues than potential resolutions. I’m certainly not suggesting to discredit customer’s claims on what they may perceive to be the issue, it’s just that they tend to have a limited technical vocabulary. This is where consulting a system’s Console log can be invaluable because it notes problems in absolutes, which can pin point issues more effectively.

Considering the immense insight that Console can provide when diagnosing an issue, there is just too much code to cover in this article. For the sake of time, I’m drawing focus to the ever so helpful “previous shut down code” logs.

To locate these — if present — you simply open up Console in the utility folder. This can be found by selecting *Go > Utilities > Console*, or by simply typing “Console” into Spotlight in the top right corner. Once open, there is a very helpful search field to help narrow one’s research into a specific issue. I often find “shut down”, “sleep”, and “fail” to be great modifiers.

In the case of a particular unit that was checked in today, the symptom as noted by the customer is as follows: “MB is ‘screaming’ at random times during use. Loud noises coming from the machine.” As a technician, ‘screaming’ is a term that isn’t widely used, and without more specifics, can pertain to just about any hardware component that has moving parts (i.e. hard drive, fan(s), and optical drive).

Upon booting the system, I was not able to replicate the issue, but by digging through Console, I did discover that the system reported a -60 previous shut down code multiple times. -60 indicates a bad master directory block, which helps isolate the issue to a potential software corruption on the drive. In turn, this informs me to proceed with a split-half search of the drive by running diagnostics to check the integrity of the operating system, and to determine if the issue is either software or hardware related. Although this isn’t a precise point of failure, without console I would have been trying to fish out the problem without a fishing pole.

I’ve included a file with a list of negative error codes (0 to -261) with brief descriptions that may be helpful to reference. You can grab a copy “*here.*”:http://images.smalldog.com/pdfs/Negative-Error-Codes.pdf