There was the laptop that had a bottle of water spilled into the carrying bag it was stored in during one trip to Detroit for my daughter to have eye surgery. There was a later upgrade when I had needs for additional power and now, today, I have a machine sitting to my right that's the next iteration in the computer that will be home for all the work I do. It will go places with me, including around the house as I help my daughter with her schoolwork, or decided to take a board meeting Zoom call while relaxing against the headboard of my bed. (Taking board calls while on your bed in pajamas is definitely one of the benefits of COVID-19.)
I have my current Mac backed up. Every day it copies the prior day's changes to anything on the entire system to the Time Machine backup storage I keep. I know, from unfortunate experience with that waterlogged laptop, that I can tell the new laptop to restore from the current Time Machine backup. If I choose to do this, in only a few short hours the new laptop will be almost indistinguishable from the old. Only I've decided not to.
It's been a lot of iterations of machines and it's time to start from scratch. It's not the easy path, but I think it's the better route to take. It's definitely not the easier path. I have (I'm sure) far more things on the current laptop—the one on which I'm writing this post—that I'll discover over the next few days.
It's good work and time well-spent in the long run; but it feels like lost time, doing things to get to the point I already was. I'm looking forward to having it done though. I'm hoping the number of swear words will remain low. Apple does a good job of making things easy but that's only a small part of the work.
So for now, I'm signing off so I can get to work on the long list of things on the "new laptop to do" list. Before I go, though, I took a picture of the third thing I was asked after turning the new machine on. The first was what language I wanted to proceed in. The second was what country the laptop would be in and then there was this:
Apple has the best accessibility integration of any company. For the third question, I could have turned on Voiceover. My daughter will use Voiceover to navigate anything and everything on her phone and computer in the future. It's complex in implementation and Apple has spent significant dollars into making the support comprehensive. Voiceover opens doors that would otherwise be closed to my daughter.
The Big Boy Update: I talked to my son about screen time on the way home from school. He saw his pediatrician this week and was explaining to me that he suggested no more than two hours per day. I was trying to explain to my son that if he wanted to have more than two hours on Saturday and Sunday, perhaps he shouldn't use all two hours today. He is going to have to learn a lesson from experience though. He knows, but he still couldn't help but blow all two hours before dinner tonight.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter did some of the practice tests for the upcoming National Braille Challenge today. A half-hour is given for each section and I was expecting there to be more material than what I printed out. This year is her last year in the Apprentice category, which means she's the oldest and knows the most information. It was quite easy for her. I called out spelling words that she had to spell correctly as well as list the correct contracted version of the word. Then she did a proofreading section. She finished both sections in a single half-hour. She had a few errors and didn't like it, even though she did very well in total points. We're going to do more tests in the next week. I think she'll be ready and will have a very good chance of scoring well against the other competitors in her age range.
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