Talk Macs

The Misused Monitor In Question

Macinhome Mobile Consultant (MMC) Blake Wickman is not a scientist. Anymore. He is, however, a self-proclaimed expert in the field of Brainology. As a brainologist, Blake has made some controversial discoveries regarding what he calls the “nerd-brain”. This tertiary growth between the cerebral cortex and cerebellum – divided into the Upper, and primal Lower nerd-brain, is what gives the select few people in whom it is developed the ability to over-complicate problems, and to deconstruct them to an inane degree, especially when a simple solution is readily available.

Macinhome hires only people with overdeveloped, almost tumorous nerd-brains. This recurring blog feature will be devoted to chronicling the complex, nerd-brain solutions MMCs came up with to problems that turned out to have rather simple outcomes. Hark, Nerding the Question:

MMC Andrey was sent out on one of his first solo jobs during his training period. The client was initially OK with his performance, but she called in later sounding pretty concerned. She had switched from Microsoft Entourage to Apple Mail (with Andrey’s help and at his insistence) When he’d left her everything had been working fine, but now when she opened her Mail Application, the window would not appear.

The client explained that the menu bar did, indeed, change to display Mail as the primary running application…but nothing to the tune of a list of emails would eclipse her desktop background. Nothing at all. Andrey was concerned, and his brain Nerded the Question.

He asked the client to quit out of Mail, restart the program and lastly, to restart the computer. No improvement. Nerding the question further, Andrey asked the client to click Window > Zoom, in case Spaces was running, and the mail window had shifted to one of the virtual desktops Spaces creates – this would center it in the current screen.

Nothing. Andrey began to feel the burn. He asked the client if he could call her back, and he got on the horn with a more elite Fully Trained MMC. A short discussion later, the Question had been Nerded to the nth degree, and it looked like the next move would have to be removing Mail’s Preferences file in <username>/Library/Preferences. , The client’s user accounts would have to be set up from scratch, but that would be a small price to pay in resolving this complex, software-based anomaly.

Back on the phone with the client, Andrey was about to walk her through toasting her Mail Preferences when a solar flare (or possibly a local microwave or cell-phone signal) suddenly caused his nerd brain to temporarily shut down. Able to think with his normal brain for a split second, Andrey suddenly remembered that the client had a secondary external monitor hooked up to her MacBook.

“Wait!” he said. “Your Mail isn’t displaying on your second monitor, is it?”

“Oh, no, no,” said the client, “The second monitor is off.”

“Would you mind turning it on for me?” asked Andrey delicately.

And there was the Mail window. Safe and sound on the second window. Just a power button away.

Before Nerding the Question, Remember: When you turn off an external secondary monitor, its contents are Still There.