This week's adventure was loading System software onto the laptop. It came with System 9.0.4 and I reinstalled the whole system on Monday. I was quite tickled to discover that the Chinese language kit, which I bought cheap from Half Price Books and never used, was included in System 9. On Tuesday, OS X was delivered, but too late for me to attempt installation. I did open the box and peeked at the "getting started" literature. Noting that it recommended the latest version of System 9 in order to use Classic, I resolved to check Apple's site for updates. This I tried to squeeze in on Wednesday, but I discovered that the road to the latest version included three updates which threatened to take about 5 hours for my trusty 56K modem to download. So, I shlepped the laptop to work (Hey! There's a name for the machine--"Shlepp") to take advantage of the faster connection. I was happy to discover a nice feature which allows one to make the iBook behave like a Firewire drive. It makes transfering files from my work Mac almost as easy as when I had the old machine with the built in Zip drive. What was not so pleasing was the fact that the first update wouldn't touch my language kit enabled System unless I had the CD. Sooo, my sliver of free time on Thursday was filled to overflowing with uninstalling the language kits, running all three updates and then loading OS X. The latter ran over into lunch, which I spent chewing and running up and down stairs. (Had I planned it better, I would have installed the files at Noodles' desk in the kitchen.) Friday I spent setting up the Internet connection and the different users.

Of course, none of this is my point.

What I didn't mention was my little shadow--Poodlepums. Poodles loves the computer, and spent a good part of the time looking over my shoulder. Back when we switched to OS X at work, I borrowed The Robin Williams Mac OS X Book and let Poodles read it too. She fell in love with OS X and had longed for the day when she could play in it. Naturally she is very excited. I've been a bit excited, too, but my euphoria has been tempered by the need to make the silly thing work. Still, I had to long for the day when a little thing like a computer upgrade was an event to celebrated. Damn this middle aged cynicism!