Adventures in Shrewsbury

[fbhjr]

Yesterday our new computer came in.  It is much larger then the old one it
is going to replace.  It looks like a Star Destroyer sitting on our table
and covers ¼ of the table.
My wife went off to her Monday night sword fighting research group.  She
was happy to not be there when I was setting up a new computer as it never
goes as well as I would want.  I always end up sounding like the Christmas
lights guy in the song “The 12 Pains of Christmas” shouting out things like
“why the hell are they blinking?”  She left at 5:45 and would be gone 4
hours.  I was sure that would be enough.
Apple has an automatic transfer program for moving everything to a new
computer.  Even though the old one uses the old chipset instead of the
newer Intel ones they’ve used the last 5 years and a lot of the programs
won’t run, I still decided to use the transfer to get all of the settings
and data files.
I started up the program and it told me to connect a fire wire cable
between the two.  We have never thrown away a cable.  I’ve still got my old
SCSI cables, just in case.
But, despite having several fire wire cables of several flavors, I didn’t
have any that fit the new iMac.  It offered to do the transfer over our
wireless network, but the estimated transfer time of the 150 gigabites was
measured in days.
So, I set off to find a cable.
I went over to the Staples ½ mile from our apartment.  They had dozens of
different USB cables of all sizes, shapes, and connectors.  They had 2 fire
wire cables.  Both were the kind I already had.
So, I drove over to Best Buy in Worcester.  They sell these iMacs, they
must have the cables for them.
I walked in to the store saw the guy in the black Apple shirt standing by
the iPads and walked right up to him as he was telling a woman what she
needed to connect and iPad to her computer.
He looked over at me with a sad look.
“I was supposed to get off work 15 minutes ago to go watch my daughter’s
soccer game,” he said.  “Is your question a fast one?”
“I need a fire wire cable to connect this type of iMac,” I said pointing to
the one next to him.  “To the kind they made 6 years ago.  If you can just
tell me if you have it, that’s all I need.”
“We have that!” he said with a smile.  “I can show you that quickly!”
He led me over to aisles and pointed to an empty space on a rack.
“This is right where they should be,” he said.  “It looks like we’re out of
them.”
“Do you know when you’ll get more?” I asked.
He shook his head and looked down.  I was quite sure he was thinking “I can
go look that up.”
“Wait!” he said.  “They put them in the wrong place on the rack!”
He reached down and grabbed one off of a lower prong.
“Here’s what you need, now I’m going to see my daughter!”
He ran off while I paid for my cable.
Before I went home, I decided I should get something to eat at some point.
So, on the way home I stopped at Moe’s for a burrito.
Their front parking lot is small, and there were two different cars parked
across two spaces.  One of them was only ¼ of the way into the space next
to it, and I was driving the small coupe.  So, I very carefully pulled into
the space they had left me.
When I walked into Moe’s there was a guy in line staring at me with his
eyes bulging out.  He kept looking between me and the parking lot with a
very sour look on his face.
I just smiled.
I got my food, and went back to the parking lot.  As I pulled out a big
sedan put on its blinker to indicate they wanted my space.  There was no
way they could fit in where I had and as I drove out of the lot I saw him
still hovering there with a confused look on his face.
Even over the fire wire the transfer took more then 2 hours.
But, I got it all moved.  I called up World of Warcraft on the new computer
and logged onto one of my characters.  Just as my character loaded, I heard
my wife on the stairs.
“I see you got it running with no problem,” she said as she came in.
Well, it was running.  And, I’ve had far larger problems setting up other
computers in the past.
So, all is well that ends well.  Right?