wiredfool

The Macbook has returned from its short vacation at Apple’s repair facility. It was exhibiting the classic symptoms of the random power off bug, where it would just shutdown without warning at random times. It also had a bit of a whine, and the wristrests were discoloring a bit, but I hadn’t mentioned that to the support guy.

A short chronology- Monday: Call: 10 minutes on the phone and I’ve got a case number and a box on the way. Tuesday: Box arrives, leaves via DHL. Wednesday: Machine arrives in Memphis, is fixed, and put on a plane back to me. Thursday, Machine arrives via FedEx with fresh hard drive. Saturday, back up and running with my environment.

I expected a motherboard swap, but it looks like they pretty much replaced the whole machine, pausing only to swap my ram from the old one to the new one. Which unfortunately means, new hard drive. I had backed up my user directory, but not the rest of the drive. Which, in hindsight would have been a good idea, since I wouldn’t have to go reinstall Python and Xcode, and the other few applications that I use that don’t live in the ~/Applications folder. But on the bright side, a format and reinstall gave me the choice of not installing a ton of stuff I never use — saving something like 10 gigs of space. Significant, now that I’ve got a machine that’s burning 5 gigs at a shot with Parallels Virtual Machines.

I’m also taking this opportunity to split my normal user from the admin user for a bit of extra security. I’m curious to see how much of a pain that turns out to be. I suspect that I’ll still give myself sudo access, but require that any super extra special software installs be done by the admin user.

From the new (old, 1914) Carousel at Woodland Park Zoo.

Shown here, the orange truck pushing the 77 (Phil Sr.) into the wall, leading to a badly bent front suspension. On the bright side, Phil Jr (17, blue and white) appears to be avoiding this mess.