Keychain -2147415734 error.

After a few weeks of banging my head against the keyboard – and only having small key impressions on my forehead to show for it – I think I’ve solved the problem of receiving the error:
“Keychain error
There was a problem saving to your keychain. Please try again or use Keychain Access to verify your keychain. Error: -2147415734.”
Essentially, my various Macs and iPhone were not syncing. Every time that I added a new date in iCal or a new entry in Address Book, I couldn’t be guaranteed that those would appear on the other machines. Further, using .mac/.me was like watching paint dry; it would either be slow, unresponsive, or sticky.
I’m noting because others might find this useful and, well, because I may forget in two days time how the problem was solved.
The issues seems to be around the Mac’s Keychain, which either becomes corrupted or experiences a permissions error. There is some information about it here, on Apple’s discussion board. The last post on the board was the most helpful, though not extremely so.
Here are the steps I took to remedy the situation:

  1. Shut down all applications on all computers.
  2. Ran Cocktail on all machines.
  3. Opened Keychain Access (an application in the /Applications folder)
  4. Opened Keychain Access Preferences and then clicked on “Reset My Keychain”
  5. You get the standard warning but I said Ok
  6. I restarted the computers, just for good times’ sake and re-entered my .Mac/.Me information BUT this time, I used my username only (e.g. username and NOT username@mac.com or username@me.com), as I believe part of the original problem stemmed from a multiple addressing issue on Apple’s part

I hope it’s helpful to someone out there.

O2.

On the day of the inauguration, my dad noted on the phone to me that he thought that January 20, 2009, was a more important day in the history of the United States than the election of John F. Kennedy. For some reason, I was taken aback by this thought; afterall, Kennedy was a massively exciting figure during a complicated, transitional time in American political economy and culture.
But, in looking back a few days, I can see why my father says this and the photos he pointed me to on the Big Picture site confirm it. Because the world has become smaller (or flatter, or warmer, or more wired), the impact of Obama’s ascendency is simply felt more widely. Obama represents a fundamental shift in the way we perceive others in the world, peering at us as we peer at them.

O.

What an incredible inauguration. Obama is fearless. He spoke truth to power while former President Bush sat next to him. He asked all Americans to help him solve the massive problems faced worldwide. He’s now walking down the street in the freezing D.C. cold as throngs of fans yell out to him. And, interesting to me, he launched a brand new White House website today, which is a thing of grace. Not least, he sent a crack team of his staff to get to work as soon as he was sworn in. What more can we ask of the man? Within 4 hours of his Presidency, he’s changed the country, forever.
P.S. The thing that brought me and many others to tears today were the words written by poet Elizabeth Alexander. Here’s her poem, called Praise Song for the Day:
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.

Fistful of Love.

It’s interesting to compare the warm hirsuteness of Bonnie “Prince” Billy below to the quietly agony on visual display in Antony and the Johnsons’ Antony Hegarty.
I’m so amazed at the raw, sentimentalized and deeply emotive power of Antony. He’s practically busting out of his body through the tiny voice:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CImsEJHYyv4&hl=en&fs=1]
And now that we’ve seen thesis and antithesis, here’s the dialectic: Antony singing with Lou Reed. Two sad, sweet men full of rage and agony singing across the chasm at each other and making that light beautiful:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7gC0bq_aM&hl=en&fs=1]

Ebb Tide.

Since I twigged to Bonnie “Prince” Billy, aka fellow Brown-dude Will Oldham, in the article The Pretender by Kalefa Sanneh, I’ve become slightly more than fascinated in the way he presents himself visually.
The music itself is quite grand but in the most quiet possible way.
To try to explain it, here is a lovely video of him on a beach singing in a hidden track (which I can’t find for some reason) on The Letting Go. Video is directed by Jennifer Parsons.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpUIsmv3AGI&hl=en&fs=1]

Massivity.

Years ago, in college, we talked about the theory of totality. At the time, in the late 1980s, the word “totality” referred to the full-on construction of reality that is mediated by corporations in conjunction with governments. The kern of the idea, based in left social theory, is that we are fully embraced by the entirety of corporate-created desire: every thought, feeling, deliberation, policy, and production (whether aesthetic or concrete) was fueled by the rationalization of generating profits, stabilizing dissent, and rooting out radicalism of any kind.
Obviously, the theory of totality is itself a kind of totality. Nothing can escape the reality of totality theory; we are all subjects to its work — and resistance, while not futile, is complicated and highly uncertain. The ideas behind totality and its many spinoffs are like those of many I know who believe that the systems in place currently are built to ensure continuity — and that there are even meta-systems of thought and governance that determine the progress of that continuity. These meta-systems appear, for all intents and purposes, to the outside world as conspiracy or on the order of conspiracy. To those who have knowledge of these meta-systems, they are more like proven theorems that have not yet been accepted.
I find it all very fascinating. With the coming economic recession/depression, people are talking about many of these meta-systems en masse and whether one or the other will either save us or destroy us. Massive spending. Massive taxes. Massive infrastructure. Massive muscle. There’s more than a bit of apocalyptic derring-do in all of the pundits arguing for massive activity to get us out of a massively complex set of problems: most recently, it’s been John Judis and Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic, and Paul Krugman, of course.
Massivity has become a new way to handle the crisis and I hope the economists and pundits are right. But I worry, deep down, that their ability to apprehend the entirety (but not the totality) of global finance and its complexity is not unlike that of people who think have a worldview based on some brand of totality). In other words, I’m wondering if the economists, who are paid to understand financial history and to get us out of the coming mess, are not fundamentally different from those who look at global systems and see conspiracy hiding in the darkness.
By no means am I associating Mr. Krugman with Sasquatch watchers. But, as much as I believe Krugman knows what he’s talking about, I worry that he’ll inevitably miss the mark as much as anyone who thinks they can see through an opaque reality.
Massivity, to me, is a new way of explaining how to solve a global crisis based on the proposition of normative economic knowledge.

Recessionary Inequity.

I just saw a headline in the New York Times online, reading Obama Warns of Prospect for Trillion-Dollar Deficits. It’s brought home to me what I’ve been thinking for some time. That the US Federal Government is now going to be forced into helping out major corporations because the government itself has been so eviscerated during the eight years of Bush rule. Had the government been running health care, building roads and bridges, and not fighting massive foreign wars, a deficit of a trillion dollars would not be either overwhelming or unrealistic. Instead, it would be considered a true investment in the future of the country and its young inhabitants.
But with so much having been given away to the banks, the insurance firms, and, soon, the car companies, the U.S. Government is essentially asking these market-based structures to do their work for them – keep people employed, ensure fiscal continuity, and set the agenda for the next dozen or so years of financial life. I’m not at all suggesting that, had the States been a socialist democracy, a massive deficit would be easier; however, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the lack of responsibility on the part of the country has resulted in even more massive future-based spending.
A diet of gluttony, under Mr. Bush et. al. (including Democrats in Congress), has taken its revenge on the body.

New Truth.

On this, the first day of 2009, I had the opportunity to watch An Inconvenient Truth paired with an episode of David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things. Both were shown on different CBC channels, in a possible attempt to swaddle the Canadian public in environmental awareness all at once, one one evening, at the beautiful start of the year. It was like a Polar Bear swim, an event that also happens today in colder climes, for the televisual brain. Going back and forth between the two channels, I watched as Mr. Gore analyzed the policies and illogic of 30 years of denial while espousing the hope of change articulated by Mr. Suzuki as he toured Europe’s windmill farms, bicycle paths, and solar-powered boats. The two shows, bookended by alternating commercials, mashed together like a song of hope for the year, and years, ahead.
Full disclosure: Mr. Gore is a client of mine.