In what may seem like an ironic turn of events, the Pioneer VSX-5000 amplifier responsible for the deaths of two subwoofers and a sound card has taken its own life, perhaps in an attempt to make retribution for its crimes.

The 22-year-old receiver and amplifier had a lonely and traumatic history that began almost as soon as its original owner purchased it. It expressed lament for a lonely childhood where it was not put to use and accumulated a considerable amount of dust.

The county examiner said that the most likely cause of death was a short circuit. No traces of ozone were found in the surrounding atmosphere.

The amp did not leave a suicide note and its original owner was not available for comment.

“Resuscitation efforts are underway,” said the current owner, Dan Fuhry, “but at this point things are looking very grim. We’re going to try the good old slap on the side, but that is currently our last remaining hope for the amplifier.”

Known for its loud output but warm capacitors, the Pioneer receiver enjoyed music with considerable bass. It loved video processing and equalizer functions, and had a talented FM receiver. “It’s such a shame to see this piece of history leave us,” Fuhry said in an interview. “It was just a great multi-purpose device. We’re going to miss it.”

The Pioneer VSX-5000 is survived by Logitech X-540 III and its host computer, Nighthawk, who told us only that she will miss not having to push ALSA to the limits. The receiver specified in its will that it did not wish for a memorial service. If resuscitation efforts are not successful, it will be recycled.

The amplifier was playing Empty Walls by Serj Tankian at the time of its death Wednesday evening. “Suppose it wasn’t into alternative metal,” mentioned Fuhry.

So I was working on my iPod trying to disable Stealth MAC without removing it. I tried using UIctl after RTFMing on launchctl and everything that it does. Unfortunately something caused my Touch to stop responding, and nothing came up when I rebooted.

I reluctantly decided to restore my device. It’s not an easy thing because I had a lot of crap on there, though it was all replaceable. I pulled up WinPwn and built an IPSW with everything but Cydia, which seems to not fit on the restore image. Everything looked to be going great, until iTunes gave me the dreaded 1604 error. Things looked really grim as I saw people talking about their $500 paperweights, and so on, and so forth.

The best instructions I could find were to log out and log back in to a Windows system as a different user. Then it occurred to me - what if iTunes’s database somehow became corrupt?

So I figured out that the 1604 error is in fact easily fixed, and here’s how:

1. Navigate to your Application Data folder. I did this by going to Start > Run and typing %APPDATA% (case matters).
2. Delete or rename the “Apple Computer” folder.
3. Start iTunes

You should be warned here that this will blank your music library and preferences, and if you bought music from the iTunes Music Store, beware that you might lose it. I personally don’t know either way because I’ve never purchased from iTMS.

Furthermore though, if you choose to rename the folder, you can have two iTunes profiles, one for restoring your iPod and one for general use. It’s not a fantastic way of doing things, but it’s better than not being able to restore IMO.

(Disclaimer: I cannot assume responsibility for any damaged or lost data or hardware caused by following these instructions.)

Wow! Has it really been a month? I must be busy or something - imagine that.

So a lot has happened in the past month, most of it being IRL things that I don’t talk about here. (That’s why God made Facebook.) But a few things have happened in my online and computer life as well.

The biggest and best thing: I got new speakers! The third X-540 set came in last week and it works great. I’ve been a lot more careful about turning this set off before playing with cables or rebooting my system, something that I’ve never had to do with other speakers. It’s a pain in the behind, but luckily Nighthawk doesn’t undergo reboots that often anymore. They actually sound pretty good for $120 speakers, so assuming they keep working for a few years I would consider them a good buy. Can’t really make an accurate judgment yet though.

A bit has gone into Enano as well. I’m working on several major feature additions to the ACL system, primarily tools for debugging existing rules. There’s a new API for calculating “effective permissions” and seeing where they are inherited from, and there will be a UI for it in 1.1.4. At this point I don’t know when 1.1.4 will get pushed out, but being an alpha it will not need to undergo a lot of testing, so I can release it when I feel that all the features I keep meaning to add are added.

I did a couple of things IRL too, namely a visit to the Albuquerque area where I have a bit of family. I did a lot of hiking around; the first day up on Sandia Peak I was pelted with snow and sleet. Pretty extreme for the Southwest, eh? I also visited Sky City and a couple of other nearby places.

Guess that’s about it, but I’ll hopefully be posting more regularly again.