Apple Tree
Today the FedEx man delivered two boxes of pure awesome.
My new company sent me a Mac Pro to use as a desktop development machine, and my personal order of a new 2.4Ghz MacBook Pro finally arrived, as well!
The timing on this was most excellent as this morning, my old MacBook Pro (which was recently soaked in Cherry Pepsi), decided it didn’t want to wake up. This after many days of actual, decent, proper functioning (aside from the harder-than-it-should-be-to-press keys and trackpad button) that had me beginning to trust it again. At first, this kind of threw my morning out of whack since the original FedEx delivery estimates for both new machines wasn’t until tomorrow and of course without my computer, it was rather difficult to check the tracking status - especially since the tracking codes were stored on the aforementioned computer…
I eventually remembered that I could at least log into the Apple Store and check my order status and get the FedEx tracking code from there by using my iPhone. (Or I could have used my wife’s computer - but she was using it at the time…) That revealed that my MBP, at least, was only about 70 miles away. Woo! That gave me hope that maybe at least one computer would get delivered today after all. So I went about the usual morning things and kept checking the status. By 9am or so, the delivery was made.
The first thing I did was unbox the new laptop and get it hooked up for a (long) Time Machine migration. Then I unpacked the Mac Pro and wired it up to my network, plugged it in, situated the case… and then realized I no longer had a functioning DVI cable to hook it up to my monitor. Drat. This meant a trip to the store - except the first place I went only had a single DVI cable on sale, it was 10 feet long, and it was $70. $70! That’s insane! These cables are like ten bucks online if you look hard enough. So I decided to go somewhere else. In the end, it took a trip to six different places before I finally found a somewhat-sanely priced DVI-D cable. Six feet for $20. Still too much, IMO, but much more reasonable than $70!
When I finally got back home, I hooked up the Mac Pro and was greeted with the default wallpaper set to… a John McCain campaign poster! Argh! Even the hard drive icon was not spared the indignity - it had been switched to the GOP’s elephant icon. My home folder icon was set to a picture of a cute bunny. Ah yes… the joys of working with crazy people. 
After some arguments between my new laptop and Time Capsule, it eventually finished and I took my new toy out for a “test drive” at the coffee shop - partly out of habit and partly because the car needed an oil change and the shop is literally across the street from it. It worked, well, like a laptop, of course. The new dimensions are tricky to get used to, and of course the no-button trackpad took some thumb-retraining, but in general, it’s pretty awesome. Oh, and the solid state hard drive is freaking amazing. It’s really fast. I/O is pretty much a non-issue now. There’s no sound - and I don’t have to worry about tilting the laptop suddenly and having my data get destroyed by a crashing read/write head. I should also point out that the keyboard is a thing of beauty. It took an hour or so to get used to the new key feel, but it’s so solid that it’s just a joy to type on so far.
After the car was fixed, I left the coffee shop right away - much too noisy there today. I got home, messed with the Mac Pro a bit more, set up Time Machine, moved things around, etc. The old laptop even decided it’d turn on again - so I took a picture of all three machines up and running. It’s pretty:
That pretty much sums up my day. It wasn’t very productive, but at least I finally have everything set up and ready to roll and hopefully all configured and happy and ready for work.