Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Every internet browser I have seen or used includes a feature known generally as “history,” which is essentially a map of where you have been surfing (over the last session, few days or even months or longer if your settings allow it).

This history list is something you can go back to and search if necessary–usually by day, week, etc. Perhaps to point someone to reference material you browsed by, or if you have to get back to that specific online auction listing you wanted to check on. Browser history is often a feature we take for granted or seldom use, but can be a needed tool to get back to where you were should the occasion arise.

There are always limitations to what the history feature can reveal; however, I came across just such a case last week while researching some genealogy info online with an associate of mine. We had finished our previous session the week before, late at night, and simply closed the lid on the sweet MacBook Pro 17-inch refurb purchased specifically for this project.

Upon reopening the computer the following session, and after checking on email etc., we tried to get back to where we had been using the History menu. It seems that the pay site we were subscribed to caches some of the information and documents that can be viewed, and that only certain pages were actually saved in the browser history.

As frustrating as it was to search the cached history that was saved the day we were researching, we could not get back to the pivotal document about the person we were looking up. We had already closed and reopened new browser windows and could not simply hit the back button at that point.

Needless to say, we learned a hard lesson about what the browser application can and cannot do for URL history. If the site(s) being visited have their own framework and cache their documents on their servers within your browser window, then your URL doesn’t change and new history isn’t being recorded. The pay site being subscribed to does have a “shoebox” feature which will be utilized much more frequently moving forward, and I expect to never lose out on an opportunity because of wrongly trusting the history feature.

While we have yet to get back to the document for the 1890’s Haverford College registry listing H. W. B. Wood’s attendance, we know the file exists, and we’ll find it again eventually. In the meantime, we’ll be adding other important documents to the “shoebox” of documents since the browser history will not save the exact content being viewed. Lesson learned!

My MacBook Pro was acting strangely last week: slow application launch times, incessant beach-balling, fans at full speed all the time, hot to the touch, and miserable battery life. The battery gave out on me in the middle of a Keynote presentation, after which I set aside all else that needed doing so I could figure out what was ailing my workhorse machine.

This group of symptoms screams software, not hardware. Excessive heat generation and fan activity can be a symptom of hardware abnormality, but it is most often caused by a runaway process. The additional symptom of abysmal battery life is the real clue. When a program on your computer encounters a situation it doesn’t know how to deal with, it can often consume a huge percentage of the computer’s processing power (and battery) to figure it out. This turned out the be the case in my situation.

If you find yourself with these symptoms, instead of fretting or just dealing with it, fire up Activity Monitor from your Utilities folder. You’ll see a list of all the processes running on your machine. This will show you not only the programs you use every day (like Safari and iPhoto), but also the behind-the-scenes stuff that keeps Mac OS X running. There are several columns in the window, but this first installment of the Activity Monitor focuses on the CPU column. By clicking on the CPU column header you can view the processes by the amount of processor capacity they’re using, in ascending or descending order.

I sorted this column and noticed that SystemUIServer was pegged at 91%. This accounted for all the problems I was having. By clicking on SystemUIServer in this window, and then clicking on the big red Quit Process button on the top left of the window, this process is forced to restart itself. With this completed, and SystemUIServer hovering at a very reasonable 0.1%, the fans spun down, the laptop cooled off and the estimated battery life remaining jumped up almost an hour.