I'll "Known Issue" YOU

My new MacBook arrived today and I was pee-my-pants excited to open it and get it going. My ex El_Gallo is (among other things) a SysAdmin and a Mac/Linux guy, and he told me that migrating from my old machine to my new one would be a snap. For this reason, I decided I would have no problem setting up my new Mac with a teething 4-month old.

Have I never met me?

It's now 8 p.m. and I feel like I've been through war and am about to fall over exhausted. Here is what happened, probably unedited. (STUPID NABLOPOMO.)

Open box. SO PRETTY. Set up computers side-by-side in dining room on large table. Move swing into dining room beside me. Move cat off chair. Bring baby into dining room. Turn new machine on. Be dazzled by welcome screen movie. (Seriously.) Click "yes" to migrating from an old Mac to new one. Select "via wireless network." Follow instructions on new machine. Follow instructions on old machine. Take crying baby out of swing and bounce her on knee. Wait while both machines whir.

Get first error message. Try again. Get same error message. Put baby back in swing. Make bottle. Feed baby in swing with one hand while hitting "Go Back" with other hand. Wireless connection not working. "Network Connection Failed" message repeating itself. Do I have a firewire cable?

Spend the next 30 minutes running through house looking for firewire cable while entertaining a drooling, increasingly fussy baby.

Get back to computers and realize new computer does not have a firewire port. Duh. It's asking for an Ethernet cable connection. Do I have an Ethernet cable?

Burp baby. Provide entertainment for baby. Move bouncer into dining room and set baby in that. Run to "box of cables" and find Ethernet cable. Connect computers. Prepare to be dazzled.

Get same error message.

Call El_Gallo and explain. "Yes....No...No...Uh-huh." Find out I need to call Apple Care. Baby back in lap. Call Apple Care while balancing baby, phone, and two computers in need of something I seem unable to provide. WTF? As I walk through the steps with Mr. Apple Care, baby gets pissed and starts screaming. Have to call Apple Care back.

Take baby upstairs. Calm her, feed her, soothe her, swaddle her, put her down in her crib.

Return to hateful scene at dining room table. Call new Apple Care person. Do all possible easy fixes. Nothing's working. Apparently this is a "known issue." Am not humored by the fact that "known issue" does not come with "known solution."

Finish "System Update" on both computers while Apple Care person gets me off the phone saying she's emailed me the other possible solutions and good luck.

Just as System Update completes, baby wakes up.

Back to bouncing. Did System Update fix the problem? No. DAMN IT. Open email from Apple Care saying the next best thing to a simple migration will be copying my hard drive to a USB external hard drive. SIGH. Happen to have one, but it's upstairs.

Run and get hard drive while singing to drooly baby. Back at dining room table, make sure external drive has enough space for my old computer's hard drive. OF COURSE IT DOESN'T. It's too full by 4 GB. (Out of 100.) Call Ish OUT OF A MEETING. "Hi, um, I know you're busy today, but just tell me: Which of these comedy videos can I delete?"

Wrestle with the "MOVE TO TRASH" function because somehow moving movies to trash isn't freeing up disk space. Figure it out eventually.

Change baby's diaper. Change baby's onesie.

Read further instructions. Discover that in order to copy my old hard drive to the external drive, I need to boot the old computer up from the install disk. HAHAHAHAHA! I moved 7 months ago and had a baby. Do I know where my three-and-a-half year old install disk is?

Grab baby and begin scavenger hunt. Eventually find install disks (YEAH, BITCHES), do a dance of happiness, realize I need to change MY clothes from the last spit-up incident.

Spend 45 minutes doing anything I can think of to soothe teething infant, finally realize baby Tylenol is in order. Everyone calms down a little.

Get back to the dining room, call El_Gallo. "What does it MEAN, launch from install disk? Hold down 'C' when the computer restarts? How am I supposed to KNOW that? That was not in Ms. Apple Care's god damned email!"

Poke around after launching via "hold the 'C' down" method and finally start copying HD onto external drive. WE ARE ALMOST THERE! Oh, except looks like copying entire computer over will take longer than a few minutes.

Tend to drooling, gum-biting, baby. More feeding, changing, holding, rocking, cuddling, and winding down upstairs. Eventually put her to sleep, warm and swaddled.

Return to dining room, awaiting Ish's arrival home. It is 7.5 hours after I began "simple" migration. Old HD has been copied to external HD. I am ready to migrate, again.

And then I realize that the external hard drive is connected via firewire. The external hard drive doesn't have a USB port. In my fury to make a workaround happen, I didn't even NOTICE the firewire-only thing.

I sit, staring at the cable that absolutely will not connect to my new computer.

Ish arrives home.

"Is she asleep?" he asks tenderly.

"This is a FIREWIRE cable," I reply.

"It...yes...it is...?"

"I can't connect this to my new computer!"

"Why not?" he asks.

"Because there is no firewire port. They don't use them anymore I guess. I don't know, the Apple Care woman was as surprised as you were."

"So...martini?"

"Yes, please."