Level 1

13 points

CPU emitted dog barks

i don't know if i mentioned this in passing in another thread but this even has the apple care people stumped. on two occasions suddenly the computer started barking at me! a couple of barks each time. the first time it scared the living daylights out of me and i thought it must be coming from some website i was on, like there was a dog animation or something but when i looked through all the open browser windows there was no such thing. i probably had a word doc open and the mail program, too. the usual. no special applications running.

the second time i thought maybe it was some kind of alert (even though i have my alert sound set to "tink") for a pop-up window. and, sure enough, when i started getting rid of open windows to identify the problem there was a small pop-up netflix window but i am still not convinced that was it. first of all, with alerts in general, shouldn't they be visual as well as audio? what if i were deaf and there were a problem? if i didn't hear the audio i would never know.

anyway, like i said, nobody i've spoken with at apple has a clue, nor have they heard of this before. it hasn't happened in a while. if it does again i will be sure to note the time and what i was doing but the whole thing freaks me out a bit because, as per usual, when anything weird happens like this i think it's a symptom of something major going wrong and as i just got this new g5 3 weeks ago it makes me nervous to contemplate such a thought.

any clue?

G5 Quad Core Tower, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 27, 2006 4:24 PM

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duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Posted on Jan 16, 2007 9:04 PM

For those of you following this shaggy dog story I just wanted to give an update. The barking continued, coinciding with my landing on basichistoryonline.com. I wrote the webmaster and asked him if he embedded the sound of a dog and intimated in a nice way (if I am recalling correctly) that it was driving me crazy.

On January 10th, at 11:15 pm (which happened to be 45 minutes before my birthday) I heard the dogs, barking more than usual. Since then, nothing when I'm on that site. Silence. I perhaps should not speak too soon but I'm thinking it was their swan song and that the dog-luvin' webmaster got the messsage and decided to do a kindness (maybe he knew it was my birthday?) and take the dogs back inside so that Bellevue Hospital would have one more free bed in their psychiatric ward for people who need it more than I do.

Now I have to figure out to whom I must award the solved points. DaddyPaycheck had the idea of it being an embedded sound but Parker tried very hard to help as did Daniel Bruno (and Steve Boultbee was in there pitching, too). I think all of them noticed similar sounds on the above-mentioned now (hopefully) dog-free website.

Able to sleep at night (almost),

Virginia Woof.

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62 replies

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 29, 2006 11:13 PM in response to ParkerKuivila

If it's not coming from the computer it's coming from, I don't know - the cable modem? The dictionary? The sound is coming out of the little holes in the G5 as far as I can tell.

No dog toys here. I am not a pet person. In the widget department I have a calculator, a weather report, an analog clock and a calendar showing me the month and the day. I'm very bare bones over here. I had put a Fetch widget there (and it is a program with a dog icon as previously discussed - the widget was a big white bone) but trashed it a while ago.

I wrote the basichistoryonline.com webmaster and asked him if he embedded some kind of sound file in the pages I look at as a little programmer insider joke. I await his response.

Dec 29, 2006 11:18 PM in response to duncecap

Can you think of anything else that barks, besides your computer?

I think that maybe during an expedition to the south-pole some explorers brought alien eggs back to the mainland. The eggs were hidden and the explorers were not aware of them. The eggs hatched and are using your computer as a control center to send send signals disguised as a house pet to send info that they have gathered by spying on us. Yes it all makes sense now.

Dec 30, 2006 7:14 AM in response to ParkerKuivila

Am wondering since it appears she is not using external speakers that by using that weak thing that apple uses as an external speaker, that it would distort one of the the sounds off the browser window enough for it to resemble a dog barking.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 30, 2006 2:00 PM in response to Daniel Bruno

It's a pretty strong sound even though it's coming from the internal speakers. I don't think it's a distortion of another sound. It really is a dog barking. I wish I could tape record it and somehow upload it so you could hear it but it happens so quickly and my tape recorder is also broken right now. 😟 It's unbelievable to witness. Most startling.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 30, 2006 2:19 PM in response to ParkerKuivila

I did reload the page several times to see if I could recreate the sound, to no avail. I just went there now and there is an ad for wild Smileys where you see a lion animation and the lion purrs like a cat. But only once. And it's most distinctly a feline, not canine sound. I tried to download the program but it is not compatible w Macs. I thought if they had this dog sound as one of the smilies then I had solved the problem.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 30, 2006 10:16 PM in response to duncecap

I somehow missed the earlier posts from Daniel Bruno and DaddyP. Sorry.

That's interesting Daniel, about the website having audio activated as the cursor passed over adless areas, etc. I just went to that URL again and went all over with my cursor and nothing happened. No sounds at all coming from anywhere. Curious. Still have not heard back from the webmaster.

DaddyPaycheck, I have no children or roommates, period. It seems the only roommate I have is this "dog." 😟 I don't know that it only happens when I am surfing. I haven't done a real scientific methodical examination where, say, I only run WORD one day and Mail the next, etc.

But I'm about to do my daily WORD doc/history website combo. Today will be a different page on the same site so let's see if it happens again.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 30, 2006 10:41 PM in response to Daniel Bruno

Daniel, I missed your earlier post about the three falling hearts. Don't know how I overlooked it. Anyway, that ad is no longer there of course. Now there is one for Nasonex with a bee picture. No sounds. And that's a better description - it is like dog getting stepped on. Technically still a bark I guess, though maybe more of a yelp?

Dec 31, 2006 1:01 AM in response to duncecap

Regarding the sounds over white space could just be the way the browser is translating the coding on the page. Maybe a number of issues. HTML errors, screen size used when the page was developed, what browser is being used to view the page, whether browser version supports the page. Maybe the ad is there but the browser version is newer and dosen't see it.Number of possibilities.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 27, 2006 10:34 PM in response to duncecap

i even just ran through all the sounds in iLife. there were a couple of dog bark entries but they were different dogs!

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 28, 2006 1:54 PM in response to duncecap

In my main library Startupitems folder it is empty and there is NO startupitems folder in my users library folder.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 28, 2006 2:21 PM in response to duncecap

Then I have two different OS9 application folders, one that came with the system, and another that I dragged over from my G3. But I don't think we need go there for now.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 28, 2006 4:20 PM in response to Steve Boultbee

Thanks, Steve.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 29, 2006 12:01 AM in response to ParkerKuivila

You tried! It's a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a Sphinx or whatever.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 29, 2006 5:01 PM in response to duncecap

Preview was open too just now. I forgot.

duncecap Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 29, 2006 10:22 PM in response to ParkerKuivila

Will deleting this Daemon delete the nice chime I get when WORD opens a document? I only want to catch the dog.

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CPU emitted dog barks