reinstalling mac osx

chronicling this headache…

1. figure out a lot of things aren’t working


2. try to back things up using time machine at work with the old macbook


3. time machine stalls, give up on the macbook and try to back things up at home with the new macbook pro


4. figure out that time machine is one of the things not working properly


5. to get time machine working, reinstall HP software, restart the server once and the macbook pro three times


6. start time machine, see that it will take 2-3 hours


7. come back after a 3-hr nap to find the power adapter is broken and the macbook pro has powered down - not certain if the time machine backup has finished before the battery died


8. (15 hours later) figure out time machine back up was about 80% finished, finish the rest


9. re-install osx (about 2 hours)


10. and the fun part now is re-installing all the software…


11. sudo gem update —include-dependencies


12. sudo port install mysql5 +server (oops, apparently this is deprecated)


13. sudo port uninstall mysql5 +server


14. sudo port install mysql5-server, mongrel, etc


15. had to remove Leopard’s rails and replace it with ours: sudo mv /usr/bin/rails /usr/bin/rails.old && sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/rails /usr/bin/rails


16. sudo ln -s  /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock /tmp/mysql.sock (and now it’s 3 am)

things going wrong so far with macbook migrations

• crontab - everything was running fine, but I accidentally reset it, and now nothing is running when I recreate it


• printing - nothing working

macbook pro

on bing.com for irony. overall pretty sweet, but some complaints

• i like to rest my right thumb on the trackpad button while moving the mouse, and i can’t do that any more, because the whole thing is a trackpad without no button.


• they took my f5 button! i’m sure there is a way to circumvent this but it’s kinda annoying i can’t refresh firefox with f5 because f5 and f6 control keyboard illumination


• select-and-drag is still a pain, but that’s nothing new

joe got me a student discount at the ucsf student store (though they never actually checked for a student id), and got an ipod touch with it as well. i’ll probably send it to etchamac.com for maureen this week.

quadriplegic on the highway

it’s a shame it was too dark for pictures and he was chugging along so slowly - we totally saw a quadriplegic man driving his chair with his mouth on the highway on the way back from laura and raymond’s wedding [in Charlotte]… words cannot describe the ridiculousness of this spectacle. truly a mind-bottling experience