When I received my post this morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover some money inside that I hadn't been expecting. Apparently there had been some overpayment on my gas/electric this year and my landlady sent back the change. It put a smile on my face while I had my haircut.

I've resolved my Windows XP issues, and eventually resolved my IE7 issues as well. Glad that's sorted. I am surprised to tell you this, but Microsoft's phone support was fantastic and I can't actually think of any company that did more to keep me happy. They even phoned me back 24hrs later to see how I was getting on. That is good service in my books.

I've been cracking on with some ASP coding again. Having to make retrospective alterations on any system always grates as it's never as straight forward when you have to reacquaint yourself with even your own code after a year. I think I've got it sorted now.

Jon called this morning and we discussed the next couple of weeks. He's planning a party again (Jon's parties are good), and asked me to whip up some interest, so have been on the phone this afternoon, and will be again this evening. The list of my Things To Do is melting down, but I need to keep up the heat. Back on it...

Right, this fix might not be for everyone, but it's definitely worth trying. Firstly, there are two types of incident here:

• those people who put a CD or DVD in the drive and lost a burn halfway through
• those people who were stupid enough to put a CD or DVD into the drive with a paper label on it

This applies to the latter group only; if you cannot get your CD or DVD out for a physical reason.

I was stupid enough to put a paper-labelled DVD into my Macbook's optical drive last night. I needed to copy it and so made an image which took about 15 minutes. When it finished, the disc would not eject, but not for want of trying (nasty groaning sounds, then automatically remounting without popping out of the slot). "Damn," I mused, "I'd better Google this one."

After only finding info on Macbook Pro users' problems with software, I eventually stumbled across an article which did the trick (for the life of me I can't find it again).

The Solution

Everyone knows that Macbooks, although lovely and shiny and Appley, can reach temperatures that will melt diamonds, and apparently, this is the key to the paper label CD/DVD problem. At these extreme levels of heat, the CD expands, the sticker glue melts and the paper... well I don't know what the paper does, but it doesn't help things. If you don't find a website in time to help you out, you might be mislead to believe this can be fixed by sticking a credit card/other firm item into the drive. Do NOT assume this is the solution - it will not solve this type of problem (as far as I discovered). The best route to enlightenment, and returning your DVD scratch-free is very simple. Let the Macbook and optical disc re-solidify at room temperature (e.g. turn it off). After you have let it cool down for a few hours, boot it up, press eject, DVD-a-la-presto, pops out a treat.

I maybe of course stating something that all Mac users have been used to for years and therefore making a dipstick of myself, but it helped save part of one Windows-user's seven-and-a-bit hundred nicker investment from a credit card/sharp object related death. I will add this disclaimer and say I'm not responsible for anything I suggest here - you do it at your own risk (but letting your Macbook cool down isn't too risky to try first, surely?).