Last of the Year?

Honestly, I should have just announced a hiatus. I have a bunch of concerts I'd like to write up, and goodness knows there's been some time to do so in the last week or so, since I have been off work most days since a week ago Friday. But mostly I've been puttering around the house and reading, and also setting up this new iMac, which arrived Thursday, a week early.

Big thanks to people on the Well and Google+ who gave me some excellent advice, such as "iPhoto plays nicely with Flickr," which is my photo site of choice, and "why, yes, that iMac can read your Windows-formatted external hard drive, so forget about Migration Assistant."

That would the Migration Assistant software that took 12 hours to hang without migrating any data from my soon-to-be-retired Dell. Apple, maker of intuitive and easy to use products, has known it was buggy for at least six months and has not bothered to fix the problems. I think it took a half-hour at most to read 10,000 photos and 1200 other files off the portable hard drive. There is probably a support note somewhere on apple.com that tells you to just plug in your Windows-formatted backup drive and read everything onto the iMac, but it's not the first thing that comes up when you search for data migration info.

As long as I'm complaining about Apple, is there any damn reason the iMac stand is adjustable as to angle but not height? Did St. Steve think it would be aesthetically displeasing to have an adjustable stand??

As to why I bought an iMac rather than another Dell, once I did an apples-to-apples machine comparison, the Apple premium was maybe $200. I decided I'd go with the nice hardware and excellent software integration, plus, I am a Mac user at work, so I have only one platform to think about now. (Except that the work machine is on Leopard and the iMac is on Lion....)

As to what this year was like for me, lots of good music but not enough vacation time; more upheavals at work, all of which worked out well for me (I work in a great tech pubs group that is on important and interesting project, and I am very happy with the people we report up through). We lost our beloved Molly B. and now have a lovely still-newish dog, Lila the Werewolf. My mother is recovering well from a broken hip suffered about a month ago. My partner is busily writing grant proposals. We swear we are taking a real vacation this year, as soon as possible.

In any event, I hope your 2011 was good and that your 2012 is as good or better.