Does your MacBook Core 2 Duo make an annoying high-pitched squealing noise when at low system usage? Mine did, so I called AppleCare. A half hour of waiting on hold and an hour troubleshooting had me headed to the local Apple store to get my baby looked at.

So this “genius” assumes I’m having problems with Leopard (apparently, nobody got the memo that v. 1.0 products are always a bad idea), and seems relieved when I tell him no. I explain the problem, and after trying to hear the noise in a busy mall, he finally disappears for about 10 minutes in back.

He comes back and says “Yeah, we can hear the noise. However, all our other macbooks back there make the same noise. Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you.” WHAT?! Nothing you can do? Thanks, I’ll just get headache every time I take this thing to the library.

Honestly though, I can’t put up with that. After poking around on the net, it looks like this is Intel’s C4 sleep state problem, and appears on C2D chips everywhere. It also happens on MacBook Pros, and some guy made a little utility that fixes it. The utility says “DO NOT USE THIS ON ANYTHING BUT A MACBOOK PRO.”

But I was desperate. So I installed in on my MacBook. The problem is gone!!!

I’ll let you know if it melts my MacBook, but for now I’m just really really happy. If you want the fix, it’s called “Shhmbp”. Go ahead, just click here and fix your MacBook C2D whine problems.

Oh, yeah, and I’m not making any safety guarantees here, just stating that it worked on my C2D MacBook (2.0 GHz, GMA 950). So don’t come crying to me if it don’t work for you.

**********Update, many months later****************
Whine is still gone, still no problems with my MacBook! Looks like this one has no apparent ill effects on a plain jane MacBook.

I do some marketing work for a national toy company, so I try to keep my eye at least a little bit on what’s going down in the toy industry—a task that has been quite interesting as of late. What has been happening this year? Lead paint recalls, date rape drug toys, and chinese toys made with kerosene.

So naturally, when I heard that the W.A.T.C.H. (World against toys causing harm) group had come out with their annual 10 Worst Toys list, I had to read what was on it. Much to my suprise, I found such dangerous items as a “Rubber Band Shooter”, “Spiderman 3 New Goblin Sword”, and “Hip Hoppa”. Yes, that’s right, these are the most dangerous toys of 2007: a glorified metal finger used for flinging rubber bands at your siblings is on the WATCH’s most wanted list. And a plastic sword. And the evolution of those old pogo balls that looked like Saturn. (The Hip Hoppa now includes a pogo-stick handle).

If you ask me, this is just plain ridiculous. How are the children of tomorrow supposed to have any fun at all? If something involves moving parts or something firmer than a wet noodle, society wants warning labels and cautionary statements. I remember as a child snapping rubber bands around, and no one lost an eye. Our swords were wooden () sticks or metal () tent poles. Pogo sticks used to be legal, and you could ride your bike without a helmet if you wanted. When we got hurt, we used it as a means of getting some attention, then went back to playing.

Pain is part of life, and I’d bet we cause more problems with Purell and overly-insane safety precautions that we eliminate. If you want your kid to be totally safe these days, it seems the only place is on the couch in front of the TV.

Let’s face it, pain is part of life. Let’s do what we can to mitigate the major dangers of life, but let’s not go overboard.

Give me back the good ol’ days.

Honestly, I’m not sure where I (or my wife) got this CD from. Nevertheless, it got ripped into my iTunes Library probably over a year ago, and I never listened to it because I always assumed that it was one of my wife’s music CDs of a genre that would be less-than-appealing to me. Was I ever wrong!

I’m positively addicted to their charged Now I Sing, and the thoughtful lyrics that permeate the rest of the album. In the midst of a chapter in my life where Christian Music fails to connect with me where I am, Pocket Full of Rocks is both relevant and surprisingly easy to listen to.