BlackBook

Thanks to Alok’s writing skills, and McGill university’s understanding, my stolen ThinkPad has been replaced with this awesome black MacBook. The machine was purchased from a local Apple retailer. I then cancelled all my credit cards, and sent a copy of the invoice to McGill’s Risk Management department. It took a little work (I’ll pass on the legal details), but once we reached the right person we did manage to get a check that will cover my laptop’s replacement costs.

BlackBook has 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, 2Ghz Intel CoreDuo, and a CSA keyboard so I can get used to QWERTY while still retaining french accented letters: éèàçù. Switching back to Mac OS X has been easy and enjoyable, since all I really need at this point is a web browser. Nevertheless I managed to install a quick developement environment for PHP with MAMP, TextWrangler and Firefox. Zend Studio seems to work ok, and Photoshop CS is usable under Rosetta. Parallels is impressive. Exposé & Dashboard rule. I played around with FileVault but decided an encrypted image was enough. The MacBook is a notebook, not a laptop: It does heat up at times. For physical security, Alok and I both purchased Kensington locks.

A computer is so much: a work tool, a phone, a vault, an identity, an entertainment center… My personal data is still out there, it still feels like rape, but at least I have means to communicate again. On Tuesday, I’m flying down to Texas.