Don't get me wrong. I love my Mac sites. I really, really do. I read them every day. Even on the weekends, when news is less than sparse. I'm an addict. I admit it. I also admit a couple of other things: 1) I get kinda peeved when my attempts at contributions to those sites are ignored, and 2) this site is, in part, my response to that rejection.
While I don't submit hints to MacOSXHints all that often, when I do, I try to make them detailed, tested and well thought out, and I only submit when I think I have something unique and important to say. And I love MacOSXHints, unconditionally and without reservation. It is by far the most useful Mac resource on the web, and is populated by the most helpful, friendly people, and run by a saint in the business. So when my Disable Spotlight Metadata Searches (or, as it's called on this blog, Getting Back to (Search) Basics) hint was not published, for reasons I won't attempt to understand, I will confess, I was crushed. That's when I started this, my first blog. It's not much, but it's my contribution to the Mac Universe, and it's a place where I can discuss whatever I want and not ever feel shunned or under-appreciated, which I've been feeling a lot lately, for myriad reasons I don't care to explain here.
Case in point: Another of my favorite sites, MacFixit was recently running a story on how the latest iTunes 4.8 returns an error regarding a problem reading movie files. (I don't remember the exact error message. If you're really interested, check out the Apple Knowledgebase Article.) MacFixit had their standard "If you are having a similar issue, please let us know," link, with which you can contact them with additional reports of problems or solutions. I, in fact, did have a similar but slightly different, and very related issue with my iTunes 4.8 -- a variation on the theme. My iTunes was beachballing after a few minutes of use, but not producing the video error message. I found and emailed the solution to MacFixit, but they promptly pulled the story. I'm sure it wasn't personal, but the way things have been going for me lately, it made me feel crappy. Yes, I know. I am a total loser, with nothing better to do than write about little tech solutions and hope they get noticed. It's quite sad, I agree. But it's all true.
And I can't help it.
In any case, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. My iTunes problem was solved by deleteing PDF -- yes, PDF -- files from my iTunes library. Seems in a previous version of iTunes I'd been testing a hint I'd read on -- where else? -- MacOSXHints (did I mention I love them?) that discussed iTunes' ability to read PDF files. And those files did not make the new iTunes version happy. Deleting them (organize your library by "Kind" and search for non-music files) got iTunes back up and not-crashing.
So there you go. Hope that helps someone.
It sure helped me.
More than you might realize.