The Untimely Demise of the Mac Mini

Categories Supplemental Thoughts
2012_07_07_FagenNightfly.jpg

The Mac Mini that was functioning as our music server (and vital source of Yacht Rock) kicked the bucket. Poof. Dead.

2012_07_07_sadMac

I was hoping that it was just something easy/cheap, like the power supply, but I took it to the “Genius Bar” at the local Apple Store and got mostly dumb looks. A known-good power supply wouldn’t light it, and the diagnosis (based solely on that fact) was that the “logic board” was dead. I think that’s what a normal person would call the motherboard. I feel like there are maybe more potential points of failure than that, but I suppose it’s irrelevant: in typical Apple fashion, parts for this model are no longer available. If you refuse to be embarrassed into buying a new one to keep up with the zealots, they’ll get you with some other form of planned obsolescence.

I’m not an outright Apple hater—I hate all computers equally—but with a few notable exceptions my fling with Apple is over. In order to revive our music server and possibly extend it into a more fully-fledged media server, I set about building a new small form factor PC. I wound up getting a Zotac ZBox barebones and tricking it out with 8GB of RAM and an SSD for substantially less than the price of a new Mac Mini. But enough about the hardware: the important thing here was that we needed to revive our Yacht Rock.

We didn’t lose any music. I had it on an external drive that didn’t die along with the Mini and it was backed up elsewhere anyway, just in case. It’s a lot of stuff: around 54GB of data. At last count, we were up to 11,628 songs, and if we tried to listen to them all back to back it would take 32.5 days. What did get lost were our playlists, most notably Smooth Sailing and Songs About Sailing, which were discussed in a previous log entry.

We could have put it back together exactly as it was, but a little turbulence every once in a while can be a good thing. We made some tweaks and this is what we wound up with:

Editor’s Note: the current sailing playlist has been moved to its own page.

Smooth Sailing

Ugly Women

  1. Reminiscing, Little River Band
  2. I Just Wanna Stop,Gino Vannelli
  3. Baby Come Back, Player
  4. Country Roads, Toots and the Maytals
  5. Moonlight Feels Right, Starbuck
  6. Easy, The Commodores
  7. Down Under, Men At Work
  8. Peg, Steely Dan
  9. I Love You, The Climax Blues Band
  10. Baby We’ve Got A Date, Bob Marley
  11. Right Down The Line, Gerry Rafferty
  12. How Long, Ace
  13. Biggest Part of Me, Ambrosia
  14. Deacon Blues, Steely Dan
  15. Mother And Child Reunion, Paul Simon
  16. I Go Crazy, Paul Davis
  17. You’re the Only Woman, Ambrosiaengland-dan
  18. Lost In Love, Air Supply
  19. I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, England Dan & John Ford Coley
  20. Lowdown, Boz Scaggs
  21. Cool Night, Paul Davis
  22. One Hundred Ways, James Ingram
  23. Rosanna, Toto
  24. Hard To Say, Dan Fogelberg
  25. Do That to Me One More Time, Captain & Tennille
  26. On and On, Stephen Bishop
  27. How Much I Feel, Ambrosia
  28. Three Little Birds, Bob Marley
  29. What A Fool Believes, Michael McDonald
  30. Pressure Drop, Toots and the Maytals
  31. If You Leave Me Now, Chicago
  32. Babylon Sisters, Steely Dan
  33. Sara Smile, Hall & Oates
  34. Africa, Totototo_toto_iv
  35. Sailing, Christopher Cross
  36. Summer Breeze, Seals & Crofts
  37. Holding Back The Years, Simply Red
  38. Steal Away, Robbie Dupree
  39. I.G.Y., Donald Fagen
  40. It’s Sad To Belong, England Dan & John Ford Coley
  41. Dance with Me, Orleans
  42. Sail On, The Commodores
  43. Escape (The Pina Colada Song), Rupert Holmes
  44. You Belong To Me, Michael McDonald
  45. It Might Be You, Stephen Bishop
  46. Key Largo, Bertie Higgins
  47. Is This Love, Bob Marley

 

Songs about Sailing

  1. Perswaded to Smuethe Music, Vincent Price
  2. Sailing, Christopher Cross
  3. Wooden Ships, Crosby, Stills & Nash
  4. Come Sail Away, Crew of S/V Fortuitous
  5. Southern Cross, Crosby, Stills & Nash
  6. Sail On, The Commodores
  7. Brandy, Looking GlassThe Nightfly
  8. Boat Drinks, Jimmy Buffett
  9. Key Largo, Bertie Higgins
  10. Sails, Orleans
  11. Sloop John B,The Beach Boys
  12. Sail Away, Neil Young
  13. Sailin’ Shoes, Little Feat
  14. Cuttyhunk, John Hall
  15. If I Had A Boat, Lyle Lovett
  16. Son Of A Son Of A Sailor, Jimmy Buffett (It’s mellow but not smooth, and kind of shitty)
  17. Rock the Boat, Inner Circle
  18. The Mariner’s Revenge Song, The Decemberists
  19. Friggin In The Riggin, The Sex Pistols
  20. Love Boat, Dionne Warwick
  21. We must go to Koko’s Boathouse Now, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter
  22. I’m on a Boat, The Lonely Island

Postscript:

  • I’ve made a page compiling all the Yacht Rock episodes in HD: /yacht_rock

 

"Prepare to fend off the bridge abutment."