While nowhere near the most exciting thing to come from China this year, I did get something from that country that I'd been looking forward to: my new MacBook. I was eligible for a no-interest computer loan from work, and given that my iMac is about seven years old, it seemed like a good time to upgrade. I'd toyed with the idea of moving over to a PC, but the nearly 20 years I've used a Mac won out. Going with a laptop made some sense given that the wife already has a desktop, and the added mobility would allow me to do things like blog while watching TV. Which I'm not doing now. Not at all. Honest.

It was kind of an interesting culture clash when I went to the Apple Store to buy the thing, as work required a quote so they could cut a check, but the Apple Store doesn't take checks for what was an on-line purchase thanks to a hard drive upgrade I was looking to do. A manager came up with the work-around - use the check to buy a gift card and use that to pay for the computer - and after a 12 minute delay when they had to call in and verify the check, the purchase was made.

Apparently the hard drive work was done in China, as when I went to track the shipment I found that it had started there and the went to Anchorage, Indianapolis, and Boston before getting on a truck in Peabody and winding up here. Total time in transit was less than a day.

So far so good with the new machine, trying to become more familiar with the iLife software so I can goof off more effectively. I'm also trying to figure out how to get these new Intel machines to run stuff from the Classic environment. I did find a decent web site with instructions, but I'm clearly not doing something right. I'll get it sorted out just in time to find out that there's a one step Classic emulator out there.

Now we just need folks like Blogger to support the Mac environment better. There are several buttons I get when blogging on a PC that I don't get here. I'd rather not have to keep hand-tagging links.