Happy Birthday Marine Corps.
I know, I’m pissing in the wind when I say this, but to all the Marines out there, don’t get too screwed up tonight.
Have a great time, and be good to each other.
In Northern Florida
Made it to the Tallahassee area.
My Brother was at work when I arrived but I know the secret handshake to get into his place.
It was so nice to walk into a silent house where the temperature wasn’t 83 because unlike at my parent’s house the A/C was on.
I made myself a drink and sat down on the couch listening to quiet music. I guess I fell asleep because I lost some time. The sound of the garage door opening, woke me. I feel so at home in my Brother’s place. Everything is neat and orderly unlike my house, and certainly my parent’s place.
But most wonderful of all was that the dang TV isn’t always blaring. My Brother, like myself only turns on the TV when he’s actually going to watch a program. Neither of us are big on having shouting matches over the racket of the TV. If you’re going to have a conversation, turn off the TV and set aside your phone.
I drove him to work today and will pick him up tonight when he gets off. My being here allowed him to have some work done without needing to take a day off. I’m glad I’m not creating an inconvenience for him. I really like this part of Florida and wish that I could just leave California altogether.
I’m hoping to be able to do exactly that in the next few years.
Sitting here in my Brother’s living room I’m catching up on stuff. The ticking of his ships clock on the shelf behind me is comforting and oddly calming. On some level, I’m working through the issues that I observed at my parent’s place. It is only a matter of time before my Mom will be too much for my stepdad to handle. Neither of them are spring chickens and both of them ingest a pharmacological cornucopia with each meal.
I suspect the number of drugs they take will be increasing in the coming months or years. This might be why my Mom is hungry/not hungry a lot of the time.
Speaking of hunger, that’s something I hadn’t been until today. I’m thinking about going out to find something to eat, after that I’ll probably come back and see if I can finish a story I’ve been working on.
My, My, My, Apple came through
I was in the process of writing a blog about the preparations I was going through to transfer to the new machine.
I was contemplating my next words, when UPS stopped in front of my house.
This is a rare event in my life, I do not have daily UPS, FedEx, or Amazon deliveries.
I thought that Apple had sent me the return kit for my old machine and was concerned that once delivered I’d have 14 days to return my old machine for credit and that this presented a problem since I didn’t have the new machine.
I groaned that I’d probably have to call Apple about it since the new machine wouldn’t be here until Wednesday or Thursday.
Low and behold, the UPS man was delivering my new computer.
I opened the outer box, then stood for a while deciding if I should start the transition process that evening or should I wait until Saturday. It was almost 7 PM. I didn’t really feel like spending the night screwing around with computer stuff.
Then I thought, “It’s here, I know this is going to take a long time. Best to get started,” and I did.
My plan was to bring the computer up without restoring anything from the backups. That meant that I’d be doing a lot of file copying from the server and possibly from the old computer in Target Disk mode.
I set the new machine on my desk and turned it on. I wasn’t impressed with the sound of the startup chime. Somehow it just didn’t sound as rich as the old machine’s.
Not an auspicious beginning. I persevered though.
I answered all the normal startup questions a Mac asks. I decided to link the system to my existing Mac ID. That would allow me access to the password file I’d cleaned up. I told the computer, “No, I don’t want to use an existing backup.” The machine thought about things for about a minute. Then It was up and asking for new instructions.
I went to the App Store. Logged in and went to the purchased software area. I thought this would buy me some time to cook dinner. I went through the list ticking off the applications that I wanted to download.
I’d just gotten up to go fix dinner, when the machine “binged”. “What now,” I thought. Surprisingly all the applications had downloaded. Damn this thing is fast!
“Okay smarty pants, let’s try this,” I thought smugly logging into the server. “This will give you something to chew on.”
I went to the folder containing my document folder. 100GB of files and folders. I selected all of them. Then dragged ‘em to the Documents folder on the new Machine.
“That should keep you busy for at least an hour or so,” I got up to go make dinner. Just a few minutes later I heard the “Thunk” sound distinctive to Apple systems saying the file copy was complete. “WTF?” I was just beginning to heat my soup.
Something must be wrong, I went back to the office to check, expecting only a partial copy or some other pain in the butt.
Nope, everything was right where it should be and the computer was waiting for the next command.
I selected the remainder of the folders to be copied from the server. I dragged them to their correct locations. This time I monitored the data transfer rate. It was astounding and the computer was still cool to the touch.
My older Mac would have been hot in some places and generally warm to the touch during this operation.
Frankly I’m impressed.
I also like the keyboard on the new machine better than the older machine. This one has a really nice feel. It’s similar to the wireless keyboard I recently purchased. The consistency between the keyboards feel is one of those unseen, unnoticed ergonomic touches that adds surprising comfort.
The new machine was up and ready to go within an hour. There are still some tweaks here and there, and there are a few applications that will not run natively on the machine.
I’m having a debate with myself about installing the rosetta application to enable compatibility.
The first backup took about an hour. But I was working on the machine completing some writing that I wanted to get done while that was going on.
Over the next days I’m sure that I’ll find things I missed but I doubt those things will throw a major monkey wrench into my day.
The only thing that is odd, is that the computer had a powerful acrid odor when I first started it up that grew stronger while I was loading software. The odor is much reduced this morning.
New computer smell, is not nearly so pleasant as new car smell!