The incremental nature of computer upgrades is fantastic … until you are faced with starting from scratch. Then, all of the little tweaks and customizations and habits that evolved over the course of regular use go missing. There is at once this great opportunity to clean the microchip garage, pitching liberally, but also a vital need to remember where that little-used electric hedge clipper got to.
I got my new computer () and began fiddling with it at the start of the month. I’m still fiddling, only now it has grown into a web site migration, too. I’m consolidating. I’m archiving. I’m finding out how sweet I had it with my clunky windows machine and all of the beloved little tools working in familiar ways. Here is a list of the newness with which I am now dealing:
- New Mac laptop — configuration, installation, OS 10.4.6 features, migration of data, retraining email
- New Dual-Boot Windows on same laptop — installation, purchase of Windows XP SP2 CD, disappointment that Parallels (beta) and the Boot Camp partition (beta) don’t work together in quite the way I expected, configuration, migration, realization I was too chintzy on the partition space to really have as much wiggle room as I’d like
- Old Laptop Cleanup — backups, toting two computer around while I discover how I really used that old XP machine, worry its value is little more than pizza money when I try to resell it
- Development Platform changes — learning new Mac tools to replace Windows tools for web development, struggling to get XAMPP and other “easy” server software installed, migration of massive data (previously backed up in many distinct places)
- Killing off old ISP account — We’ve been paying a few hundred a year for a website we never touched and email we rely on less than when we got the account, backing up files, coordinating domain name switches, telling people we owe money to we just killed the account, editing upstairs computer email client(s)
- Changing configuration on main ISP — switching main domain from blogschmog.net to makice.net, backing up files, uploading, configuring, fixing name references, pruning files
- Upgrading web sites — WordPress upgrades, MediaWiki upgrades, creation of new blogs and wikis and databases, configuration of same, hunting for unique starter themes, managing domains and emails, creating redirects and notifying small contingent of blog subscribers that the path of our blog changed
Honestly, this new computer seemed like a great idea. But the karmic fine print was that in order to really do A correctly, B through Q had to follow. And if I had only devoted a little more time the past few years working on B-Q, I’d be done and into my other work by now.
