my mother called me minutes before my alarm was about to go off, asking me when i was stopping by the cafe to pick up the car. i was still in a dreamy haze and i muttered that there was nothing to worry about since the computer (that i was picking up) was behind the cafe. i wasn't making any sense.

when i finally got my bearing, i went to the bank around 9:00 to withdraw $1300 in cash, then biked to the cafe to borrow my parents' car so i could drive 1+ hour to worcester via the mass turnpike and route 9. the appointed time was 11:00, but dimitri asked if i could move it to 11:30, but then called back later saying 11:00 was still okay. dimitri was a worcester state college student, and i met him at his dorm up on a hill along with his girlfriend (i asked him if she was his bodyguard). he handed me a box which i thought was the computer but then he pulled out the laptop from his backpack. he'd been using it up to this point, and erased his user account before finally handing me the machine.

having never been to worcester before, i couldn't resist stopping in the city to admire some architecture. after circling around, i parked in the lot across from the worcester art museum. just nearby was a cluster of pretty romanesque buildings from the late 1800's. also next to this district was what drew my attention to the area in the first place, a large seemingly-abandoned art deco building called the worcester memorial auditorium. there were all these no-trespassing signs but i think they were mostly to ward off teenage delinquents. i ignored the warnings and climbed over the steps to admire the building and take some photos.

with that i returned to cambridge, stopping at the cafe to drop off the car, show my parents my new computer, and get some late lunch (it was 1:30 by that point, i left this morning at 10:00). i biked home with the boxed computer in a borrowed backpack that barely fit. the first thing i did when i got back was to charge up the battery.

the remaining half of the money owed me by client N for work done in september finally arrived today. i wasted no time in depositing it. however, pau's nexus 4 order also arrived, so i was momentarily delayed while i packaged up his purchase for shipment to spain. the postal clerk told me for a small package (less than 4 lbs, this was barely 1 lbs.) i could ship it like i would a letter. i still had to fill out a customs form, but a small abbreviated version. the final cost was $16.75.

putting my bike into the backyard, i was surprised to find that the iceberg was gone. naturally my first instinct was that somebody stole it (i'm sure 2 story tall icicles are worth a lot of money on the frozen black market), but then i realized the ice had melted, since there were all this broken pieces on the ground beneath. i'm glad i wasn't there to see it otherwise i could've been hurt by all that falling ice. i also noticed the hose extension paul created before he and steve left for the week.

i spent the rest of the day setting up the new mid-2012 15" macbook pro. although dimitri created a new user account for me, the computer was still registered in his name. he'd also installed a bunch of software. i wanted to reformat the drive and do a completely new install. fortunately the latest OS X comes with a recovery partition (a trick i've seen in the PC world) that can automatically reinstall the system. the thing was it only included the rudimentary apps, and things like ilife - which originally came with the computer - wouldn't be included, because dimitri had already registered it under his apple account and the software wasn't transferable. not a big deal, i can get my hands on ilife no problem. the weird thing was the fresh install took nearly 2 hours, not sure why it had to be so long, reminded me of those good old days of mac system installs that required multiple disc swaps - now those took forever.

after the system finally finished installing, i downloaded the essentials: google chrome, VLC, perian, utorrent. i also managed to get my hands on ilife which i installed as well. once that was done, OS X recognized the software and wanted to download and install the latest updates. that took an additional 2 hours. in the next few days i'll need to install some more software (most importantly the suite of adobe apps) and migrate my data from the old MBP to the new one.

i'll also comment on my experience using this new MBP. OS X 10.8 is a little different from OS X 10.6, which is what i use. my favorite thing so far are the gestures, which makes computing so much easier. my 2006 MBP had some rudimentary gestures, but this 2012 version with the updated trackpad is so much better.