I have already posted about the crash of one of my four 1TB Seagate hard drives. It seems the saga continues with another 1TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive.
Every time I started my local journal application my system froze for 2-4 minutes showing the ball of doom, you know, that little colorful twisting ball. Every time I would backup the hard drive in question it would have the same result during the backup process. I figured I am dealing with a corrupt file which causes the system to ‘freeze’ temporarily, when accessed.
I ran the Disk Utility and click on the Verify option. Following the screen with the results of this hard drive:

Looks like a more serious problem. I don’t really know what to make out of this. Is it my Mac Pro (first generation) causing these drives to fail or is it the hard drive? All other drives I have up to 750GB work without a hitch for over a year now. Just these (4 weeks old hard drives) cause a huge headache.

As if this morning didn’t give me enough problems, I saw the following screen as I tried to pull up my website at PixelGrinch.com:

Can this morning present anymore ‘positive’ surprises for me? Judging by this screen I assumed all files are gone and lost. My last backup dates back over a month. You know what that means if you are talking about regular blog entries. I connected to my server and the files seemed to be available. I contacted my webhosting specialist and there was an issue with the ip address assigned within the Apache configuration file. No clue on how this happened. The website is running fine again and I am happy.

But what a bad start in the day. Both these issues wasted 4 hours of my day.

Adobe Air seems to be a nice cross platform framework. I thought giving it a shot and installed it to take advantage of nice 3rd party applications for the Adobe Air framework. I received the following screen (this is just one of the three applications I tried installing showing the same screen):

Is this an application I want on my computer? Not me! On paper Adobe Air sounds like a great solution but screens like this give me the creeps :) and I stay away from it.

My previous related post about my first 'successful' MobileMe Existing Account Renewal can be reviewed by clicking here. I just logged in to check my profile and it shows: Your subscription will end on Jan 30, 2009.
I must have completely missed the memo here! Didn't I just successfully renew my existing account August 12, 2008 for my account that was supposed to be expiring November 2, 2008. I love Apple, but this MobileMe is a true pain. Needless to say I threw out the box from my first 'successful' renewal in August 12, 2008. I would have never thought this is going to be a problem at MobileMe. I got a new box for another $100 because I read about nightmares from people with the exact same problem. Instead of wasting my time on email and phone listening to scenarios like: 'Without the number of your box we can not help you'.
So for this time I decided to take snapshots, so here we go:

I used the code from the new box (second box. At this point I have spent 200$ just to get a 1 year renewal subscription)
I was presented with the following screen:

Finally, after confirming the renewal I have been presented with the following screen:

I pulled up my MobileMe profile and it shows: Your subscription will end on Jan 30, 2009.
You have to be kidding me. Obviously this is a MobileMe bug that is costing me AND others a lot of money which could have been flushed down the toilet. At least that way we would have gotten a flush out of it. At this point I am quite frustrated that I am going nowhere with my MobileMe account renewal. I tried to go through the renewal process again and the following screen blessed me with its present after entering my code:

I contacted MobileMe support at ( I am posting this address for others in this situation trying to contact MobileMe support by email. I was not able to find a support email at the MobileMe support website at all. I found out about this one by using the .Mac support email I had on file).
I guess it will be interesting to see how MobileMe support handles this case especially with the first 'successful' renewal I do not have the box and code for any more. I will keep this post updated as long as new information are available.
Follow Up (September 13, 2008):

As expected the MobileMe support didn't help me at all and didn't make an effort of finding out what happened in regards of my first key. After all it has been applied successfully and confirmed by on screen dialogs during the renewal application of the key. Bottom line hang on to your keys even if the system shows your subscription has been applied successfully. To the second key they said that it has been applied but only as I told them my key from the box. I asked why it still shows an ending subscription date of January 30, 2009? She said the key has been applied and it is valid until January 30, 2010. So all I have is their word for it and nothing else. For .Mac I at least got an email with subscrition information. I am out of 99$ because I threw out the key after MobileMe confirmed a successfully applied renewal key. Either the system experienced a glitch or has programming bugs that caused this problem either way I know what I read and see on the screen and it should not be my burden to proof a successfully applied renewal subscription. Everything on the server is logged and I am sure the answer lies within it if there would have just been an effort from the support personnel.
I am honestly disappointed about MobileMe in obvious beta stage and their support.

My MobileMe (formerly known as .Mac) account will expire November 2nd, 2008. So I went to the store and picked up a MobileMe subscription box. Trying to renew my existing account at http://www.me.com/activate brought up the following screen:

I can login to MobileMe just fine. Why the activation is giving me an invalid password error message is not quite clear to me. Unfortunately the MobileMe support section does not offer any email support. The only way is an online chat and and they operate to certain hours only. Too bad they are offline now. I would like to add all this has taken place within FireFox and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on a Windows XP machine.

Follow Up ( August 13th, 2008)

The next morning I tried it online through my Mac Pro and all worked fine. The subscription has been applied.

This is turning into a significant waste of time and headaches. This follow up can be reviewed by clicking here.