I spent $20 on a program called Black & Whitelist for my BlackBerry to block numbers I don’t want to talk to but on some phones, especially “regular” phones, this isn’t an option. Sometimes you can call your wireless provider and have them block the number but most of the time they aren’t going to waste their time with doing this often. I noticed a lot of phones have the ability to hide Address Book entries and then I had a stroke of genius — The Silent Ringtone.

Simply add the numbers you don’t want to hear from in your Address Book and assign them this unique, completely silent ringer and say goodbye to interruptions. If your phone supports advanced profiles, you can turn off vibrate and notifications as well. This is probably the easiest (and cheapest) way to keep some callers at bay. I’m including this silent ringtone in both MP3 and WAV format.

Got a better solution? Let me know! Love this article? Feel free to leave your feedback.

I’m such a phone head.

Check the rest of them out on YouTube by searching for “I’m A PC.”

Feel free to post a screenshot of your new wallpaper in action! Got Photoshop? Make your own wallpaper with my source file. And remember, don’t hotlink my URL! I spend a lot of money on bandwidth to keep this blog fast and free of ads so please don’t screw it up.

Download Leopard Wallpaper In Your Flavor!

Download yours today!

It took me a day to get all of my stuff together and pull this update off. I use my HackBook Pro in a production environment, which means I cannot be too far away from my Time Machine drive. As the excitement mounted, viewers of this blog had already dove into it — head first, and pulled it off with mixed results (Read the comments below for more information). A lot of what you did getting to 10.5.4 will save you some time because from what I’ve gathered by updating from 10.5.4 to 10.5.5, it’s mainly just copying over a few key kexts that get replaced with the update, repairing permissions, etc. etc.

Let’s begin!

1) First, download the update directly from Apple’s website. I’m not sure if it matters where you get it but this is how I did it. I’m sure Software Update is safe but don’t take my word for it. You can grab 10.5.5 at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx1055update.html

2) Before you run the downloaded file, open up Terminal and type “sudo su -” without the quotes. Enter your user password and then type “while sleep 1 ; do rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext ; done” without the quotes. Keep this window open while you run the downloaded update and install it. It should complete in a few minutes and ask you to reboot. Before you reboot, exit the Terminal script by holding down Ctrl and pressing X (Ctrl + X). Close Terminal and hit the button on the Update to reboot your computer.

3) Once you reboot your screen may go blank or your system might auto reboot. Don’t panic yet. Reboot the system again, this time booting with “-v -f -x” and let it do it’s thing. Your screen will probably still be blank. Let it run until there’s no more CPU or HDD activity. Reboot again with normal flags (-v -f) and let it go to sleep. Wake it  up and you should be seeing the login window. If you auto login you can swipe your mouse over your hot corner (You kept that hot corner, right?) and you should see your desktop although it may appear unstable. Log out and back in. Boom!

4) Your wireless is dead, your battery doesn’t display and your sound isn’t as groovy as it used to be. Time to step back in time. Dig through your Extensions.bkup on your desktop and locate a few key kexts. Grab the latest version of Kext Helper b7 and prepare to do battle with permissions. Rather than re-patching, re-applying, etc. the steps we did in 10.5.4, we’re just going to copy over the good stuff we know worked before.

5) Fire up Kext Helper b7 and start dragging kexts into the window. Enter your password and click Advanced. You’ll want to make sure the following are displaying in Kext Helper b7: AppleHDA.kext, AppleACPIPlatform.kext, AppleAHCIPort.kext. Hit the install button and then hit Kext Permissions and Tag Cache Rebuild. Hell, hit them a couple times! Now close out of Kext Helper b7 and do the Disk Utility dance by repairing disk permissions a couple times. I ran it 3 times just to make sure. Your milage may vary.

6) Reboot. You should have everything but the battery meter. Download PowerManagement.bundle again and do your thing. Make sure you completely remove the old one (”rm -fr PowerManagement.bundle” in Terminal). Repair and reboot again. Alternatively you can back up your original PowerManagement.bundle from /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/PowerManagement.bundle.

This should work for everyone who is running 10.5.4 and possibly those running earlier versions of Kalyway’s DVD. These are as clear of instructions I can give and I must admit, they’re a little less user friendly than my original tutorial. Hopefully you’ve been following me on this blog and know a few things by now. Be sure to run Time Machine, Super Duper or Carbon Copy before you dive into this if you care about your files. After you upgrade to 10.5.5, there are some minor software updates awaiting you. Nothing major, all risk- and error-free.

While your milage may vary, the chances of you “hosing” your system is very slim. Even with a kernel panic, blank screen or spinning beach ball, not all is lost. Remember, this isn’t Windows Vista. You aren’t required to re-install for every little hiccup. Play with it, have fun, and post your success/failures here with screenshots.

NOTE: 10.5.5 doesn’t wake from sleep for some reason. Even after trying the usual methods. We may have to wait for a kernel patch or additional kext to restore it. I’ll start looking into the issue this weekend if nobody posts something here first.

Don’t panic!

Leave your computer running for a little while. Behind the scenes under that black LCD, your new applications are installing the rest of the files needed to run. Give it a few minutes to do its thing and then power the machine down manually by holding the power button. Fire it back up, log in, and enjoy your new software!

To help lighten the work load I have with deleting unapproved spam-related comments, I’ve put into effect a simple spam prevention method that I hope works out well. It’s clean, neat, and doesn’t require you to read a bunch of funny text. I hate that! This one is strictly geek — based on simple math.

You can do simple math, right?

My number? I had no idea what she was talking about. After seeing it in action on her computer, I had to have it. What a cool way to instantly communicate with someone! Previously I had been using web-based chat and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to pass the time away. My first and only ICQ number was 12516865. It’s still active over a decade later and I’d hate to see what lengthy numbers new users today are assigned.

I slowly moved away from ICQ shortly after AOL purchased them for a whopping  $407 million dollars in mid-1998. Where did I turn to? AIM. AOL let me be something other than just a number by specifying my own “screen name.” The best part was I could communucate with the then horde of AOL users without having to use the AOL Internet Service.

I still use AIM today quite often and log in to ICQ for the hell of it using one of those nifty all-in-one IM programs (Audium). I don’t talk to anyone ICQ, just receive the usual daily dose of spam since ICQ has become a hotbed for sleezy advertising. Will I continue to log in to ICQ? Who knows. I thought back in the day that AOL would disolve ICQ entirely in favor of AIM but it looks like it’s growing to the tune of 31 million or more spammers… I love the Internet.

Wanting to dive into the action myself, I fired up Parallels Desktop which I keep a copy of Windows XP SP3 on and went to work. The installation was light and fast, although could be a bit faster considering how small the package is. I figured the extra slowness was due to Windows running in a virtual enviorment. After firing it up, it looks… well, simple. Like the “Safari” look with a few interesting features.

Will I be keeping up-to-date with Chrome’s advanced search tools and Google “stuff?” The screenshot below says it all.