boy, i installed apple mac os x 10.5 (leopard) last night and it did not go very smoothly. everything is fine now, but it was a bumpy ride for a few hours till i found the solution.

this software is pretty new (a few weeks i think) so you know there will be some bugs, always are. i was just eager to try it out, so i backed up important files and proceeded to install leopard.

it got like 60% done and then failed to install. there was some message about some language file corruption or something. so i plugged on and tried it again. this time it was successful, restarted, got a blue screen for about 1 minute then it booted up fine, or so i thought.

i was playing around until the software update popped up and asked if i wanted to install an upgrade to 10.5.1

i figured why not and clicked upgrade. that's when the trouble started!

the administrator approval window pops up, which is normal, but this time, instead of just asking me for my password, it asks for a user name and a password! and it won't take the information!

so i do a bit of digginf and find out that the leopard install has changed my user to a standard user and not an admin user. in fact, THERE IS NO USER ADMINISTRATOR in the whole computer. this spells trouble.

i spent the next 2 hours trying all sorts of passwords, scouring apple's web site, searching google for possible solutions and getting pissed.

i kept coming upon 2 solutions. one was to boot up to something called single-user mode (gets you to the unix part of the machine where only keyboard commands do anything) or to boot up the machine from the install dvd and change the password from there.

fine. the problem was, neither option worked! the machine just kept booting up into leopard and not into either of these other methods. i was frustrated beyond belief.

so at this point, i could use the computer, but i could not install any software or change any system settings.

i happened upon this one forum where some guy described a very similar situation and then he says he solved it by TAKING HIS KEYBOARD off one port and putting it directly into the machine usb port.

ha! i took my keyboard off the usb hub, hooked it to the usb port of the imac and booted up and it worked! i was able to change my root password and make my usual account an administrator account once again and the problem was solved.

i sure wish apple would post this as a possible solution. it would have saved me 2 hours of frustration and i could have played with my new leopard install for 2 more hours.

so far no other leopard problems yet.

here are the links to the post i found and to the apple page for the fix...

post...http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5896462

apple fix...http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306876

hope this helps someone else.

got to chicago early today and went to the navy pier on lake michigan. neat place, but the signage is horrible. come to think of it, most of the signage we have seen in chicago has been really bad.

we spent a good part of the morning on a wild goose chase just trying to get back to the entrance to the dang navy pier after we missed it the first time.

we got on a boat for a 45 minute lake michigan tour and it was really nice. only 13 bucks a person and you got to see all along the shore of the whole city with a great narrative too.

we spent some nice quality time with our cousin craig and went out for a nice italian dinner. all in all, a good start to this trip!

most bad deals you can see miles away unless the hook is big enough.

well, we hooked into a real crummy one last night.

my lovely wife, myself and my in-laws, fortuna and isaac went out for an appointment at this place called "directbuy". if you have watched much tv, you have seen the ads. people doing home remodeling (yup, that's us) are gushing (no pun intended) about saving $30,000 or more on kitchen cabinets and other home furnishings.

in a nutshell the deal is that you become a member, go to the showroom and can then order all sorts of everyday and luxury items right from the manufacturer at the price they sell to stores at. no markup or middleman.

so we view the showroom, listen to the silly presentation and finally the guy gets down to the membership and casually says it's only $4991 for the first 3 years! isaac was ready to leave at that point, but ruthie and i wanted to find out some more details. fortuna was graceful as ever and waited outside with isaac.

it got worse from there. turns out they want you to decide right there and then if you want to become a member. can't come back ever again if you turn them down. if you want to finance the small amount of $4991 they want 17% interest. just to get a price quote on an item for comparison so you know if it is even a good deal they want a yes or no to membership right then!

this place was like 30 miles from home and they expect you to come running out there both to order something and to pick it up. are they nuts?

so we had a quick and dirty little huff and puff with the "director" (the guy was so nice before the presentation and so pushy afterwards) assigned to follow us around and skeedaddled out of there!

unless you just have lots of money and time to burn, i suggest staying away from directbuy. jmho, oy.