I can't print from my Mac OS X Lion MacBook Air, when all else fails reset printing system

My primary computer is a MacBook Air 13" 256GB SSD running Mac OS X Lion.  After 14 years of being a Microsoft employee and 5 more years of using Windows as an independent I switched back to Mac.  I worked at Apple from 1985 to 1992 and part of what I worked on was the MacOS graphics, printing, and font system, so I am pretty tech savvy.  Well extremely tech savvy.  

Lately I have been watching print degrade on the Mac to where I could no longer print to two different network printers I have at home.  For a while I could print to one printer, but not the other and thought it was the printer problem.  One in our house and one in my office.  I could print to both of these printers reliable from a Windows PC.  

Last week I spent 45 minutes trying to print a powerpoint presentation and never was able to print.

I had deleted all installed printers, reinstalled drivers.

Finally, today I found Apple Support article to reset the print system as my guess was the print spooler was messed or the discovery of network printers was corrupted.

What does Reset Printing System do?

• Deletes all queues and jobs.
• Resets all printer settings to their default by deleting configuration files.
• Performs a permissions check on the /tmp directory.

Any printers, scanners, or fax modems that previously appeared in System Preferences will need to be added again after resetting the printing system.

Resetting the printing system in OS X Lion

To use the Reset Printing System function in Lion, follow these steps:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Choose Print & Scan from the View menu.
3. Hold down the Option key while clicking the "-" (Remove printer) button. If no printers are currently added, hold down the Control key while clicking in the box that appears above the "+" (Add printer) button, then choose Reset printing system… from the contextual menu.

More and more i am running I see data center people running Macs, a lot of them Macbook Airs.  In case you pull your hair out in frustration, I hope this saves you some time.

PUE has turned into a marketing distortion metric

I wrote some of the first PUE blog posts and ghost wrote a bunch of PUE articles for the execs who didn't have time or the skills to write about PUE. I don't write about PUE that much as it turned silly.

Like how?  It has turned into a reality distortion field, some how making it seem a company is superior to another with its low PUE.  Steve Jobs was the supreme master of creating reality distortion fields.

Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintoshproject.^[1] Tribble claimed that the term came from Star Trek.^[1] Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote speeches (or "Stevenotes") by observers and devoted users of Applecomputers and products.^[2]

One of the best discussions I had on PUE was 3 1/2 years ago with Google's Urs Hoelzle.

Google Uncloaks PUE Data Center Details

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2008 AT 2:53AM

modifyremoveorganizepost follow up

Why is it important for Google and others to uncloak? Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry provides a view on human nature.

Gene Roddenberry indicated in various interviews that "our heroes don't sneak around", indicating that the Federation made a conscious decision to not develop cloaking technology.

We have all read about Google's PUE data center announcement, and I was waiting for the news to die down. Then, Google's PR group offered me the chance to discuss their PUE announcements in more detail, being a a curious guy I said sure. 1-1 discussions are always useful.

Well they must have really wanted something more to be written, because they set up my meeting with Google's Sr. VP of Operations,Urs Hoelzle to discuss details on Google's PUE data center details.

 
Urs Hölzle 
Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

A more to date PUE post is Chris Crosby's discussion of The Dirty Little Secrets of PUE

The Dirty Little Secrets of PUE

I was reading an article the other day asking the question, “Whose data centers are more efficient? Facebook’s or Google’s?”, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the irrelevance of the entire premise for the average enterprise or service provider data center operator. Certainly there is a small curiosity factor here but isn’t this really just a more sophisticated way of asking: “Ginger or MaryAnn”? Interesting to ponder but is it going to change the way you operate your data center? Probably not.

While these two titans Indian leg wrestle their way to be the first to claim that they have achieved nirvana (in this case a PUE of 1.0), data center professionals whose sites’ support everything from the company’s email to commodities futures trades to ERP are too busy to be designing their own servers, cleaning off their roofs and implementing new containment strategies to shave another hundredth of a point from their performance rating. To a certain extent aren’t both of these exercises in futility?

Chris closes with a post that hopefully others will follow.

How about another approach…

I would argue that it is more important to achieve a level of data center efficiency that achieves an optimal level of sustainable and predictable performance at the lowest load level possible. This not only reduces your operational costs but also provides you with a level of certainty that positively impacts your budgeting (power pricing margins for service providers) as the IT load within you facility increases. We shouldn’t forget that data center efficiency isn’t about score-boarding in a press release, but in cost effectively (and in some cases, profitably) operating the facility. This strategy better enables us to answer the larger questions that we are confronted with, which in this case is obviously…MaryAnn.

Chris sounds much practical than saying I have a PUE of 1.012.

Apple's Renewable Energy Plan for Maiden, NC

Apple has launched a web site for its Renewable Energy efforts in Maiden, NC its showcase data center.

Google is getting some great traffic, 340,000 views of its "the story of send" with an environmental message. 

Greenpeace has been attacking Apple claiming its data centers are bigger than 20MW.

Greenpeace raps Apple for lowballing data center energy

The environmental watchdog says documents for diesel generator permits show Apple plans to expand its energy footprint at its North Carolina data center, but the years-old documents don't offer any definitive proof.

Given Apple makes a clear statement of its data center load is 20MW.

Would you believe of bunch of environmentalist who have no experience in the data centers or Apple, the #1 PR machine that puts the information for all on its site.

To address complaints of Apple not sharing information the state of North Carolina is involved.

Accountability and transparency.

We want to ensure that our efforts to use renewable energy are transparent and that everyone can follow our progress. That’s why Apple will register the renewable energy generated by our solar arrays and fuel cell installations with the North Carolina Renewable Energy Tracking System (NC-RETS) established by the North Carolina Utilities Commission.

The media outlets have picked up the story and it is spreading.

Apple to use only green power for main data center Reuters - ‎2 hours ago‎ By Poornima Gupta (Reuters) - Apple Inc plans to power its main US data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming computer ...   Apple Data Center Will Be Totally Green by 2013 Bloomberg - ‎1 hour ago‎ Apple Inc. (AAPL), targeted by Greenpeace International over its energy consumption, said its 500000- square-foot data center in Maiden, North Carolina, will be powered entirely by renewable sources by the end of the year. The move, announced today on ...   Apple's iCloud data center to use 100% renewable energy by end of year Apple Insider - ‎1 hour ago‎ By Slash Lane Apple's main iCloud data center in Maiden, NC, will be powered entirely by renewable energy by the end of this year with the construction of two solar array installations. The feat will be accomplished with the construction of both new ...

The Games The China Web Companies Play

What is going on in the China data center market is quite complicated.  I've had a variety of people talk to me about working on projects in China, and I have passed so far.  I used to go to Asia every 6 weeks, but those days are long gone.  But, I do talk to a lot of people who go, so I can still get information on what is going on.

China has successfully driven out Google, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, and many other big web brands.  This leaves the Chinese companies to reach the China market.  The reasons for this could be a long, long post in itself.  Let's treat it as a fact that China wants Chinese companies to build its web.

Now for years, the provinces and many other groups have attempted to be entrepreneurial in building their own web services in data centers scattered around China. In the same way that there are empty ghost cities in China. 

Ordos: The biggest ghost town in China

By Peter DayOrdos, Inner Mongolia, China

Continue reading the main story

In Inner Mongolia a new city stands largely empty. This city, Ordos, suggests that the great Chinese building boom, which did so much to fuel the country's astonishing economic growth, is over. Is a bubble about to burst?

There are ghost data centers in China.  Many are in these ghost cities, but also scattered around.  Can you imagine if the US Federal government decided where data centers should be built?  The data centers would be built where polticians would benefit most.  

Given the censorship requirements of the China Web, the costs are increasing substantially decreasing profits.  The WSJ reports on this situation with Tencent, Sina, and others.

Similarly Sina said it would continue to invest heavily in its Weibo microblog, though a timeline for profitability remains unclear. Chief Executive Charles Chao said the company expects to earn revenue from the site by the second half of the year, but added it would take several quarters to judge advertiser interest in the platform, which has more than 300 million users.

Revenue increased 6% from a year earlier to $106.2 million, but operating expenses jumped 61% to $67.2 million. Sina attributed the rise primarily to personnel and infrastructure costs associated with Weibo.

The company didn't elaborate, but analysts also say the company is hiring censors to help it delete posts considered too sensitive for China's tightly controlled Internet. China has cracked down on Internet content ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition that begins later this year—a process made even more sensitive by the recent ouster of a former Chinese Communist Party highflier, Bo Xilai.

 This is all part of the game played to build data centers in China.  One of the interesting parts is how data center infrastructure - land, power, water, and network access are being used to regulate who builds.  In the past data centers would be built if you had enough money.  Now even money won't get you past the 3 year approval cycle for a 10MW substation.  You need the approvals from the right agencies to get past this hurdle any quicker.

There are a handful of companies that can do this.  Do you know who they are?

How big is the water on Earth? a sphere 860 miles in diameter

One of the things Compass Data Center's Chris Crosby, Google's Joe Kava and I will regularly discuss is the lack of appreciation for how scarce water is.

How scarce is water on the earth?  Consider this image that shows how big all of the Earth's water is compared to the size of Earlth.

Picture of Earth showing if all Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. Diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.
Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (©); Howard Perlman, USGS.
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 About 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth's water. But water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and earthgwaquifer.html, and even in you and your dog. Still, all that water would fit into that "tiny" ball. The ball is actually much larger than it looks like on your computer monitor or printed page because we're talking about volume, a 3-dimensional shape, but trying to show it on a flat, 2-dimensional screen or piece of paper. That tiny water bubble has a diameter of about 860 miles, meaning the height (towards your vision) would be 860 miles high, too! That is a lot of water.

 

The Earth's water would be 860 miles in diameter, and the Earth is 7,900 miles in diameter.

Water seems much more scarce now doesn't it.