Paradise ponders: visitors, MacBook Pro OOB, sprinkler progress, and pump mount edition...

Paradise ponders: visitors, MacBook Pro OOB, sprinkler progress, and pump mount edition...  We had a nice surprise yesterday: Dave and Barb H., old friends of ours from Debbie's San Diego agility days, were in the area and decided to drop by our house for the afternoon.  They drove their enormous (40' long!) RV, towing a jeep, up to our place from Farmington.  We had such a nice visit with them!  Lots of talking, showing them the homestead, and then driving around south Cache Valley with them.  When they got ready to leave, they loaded up their five dogs (who had been carousing in our back yard), and they promptly took over the cockpit (at right). :)  We were said to see them go...

When I got my new MacBook Pro on Saturday, I took a few snaps as I unboxed it and set it up (below).  As you may already know, Apple is famous for their “out of box” (OOB) experience – opening a box containing one of their machines is exciting and almost sensuously pleasurable. Every last little detail, right down to easy ways to remove tape and even the smell are carefully engineered.  Each product has an entire team of people devoted to getting the OOB experience as good as it can be gotten.

In my case the MacBook Pro arrived via UPS in a plain brown box, rather like sex toys or pornography are delivered.  In the case of Apple, the ordinary appearance is to refrain from attracting thieves, not out of any concern that the recipient might be embarrassed.  As is typical with Apple products, a tiny little “zipper” broke the tape holding the box shut, and the inner classic white Apple box was revealed.  That box was shrink-wrapped in clear plastic, easily removed.  The exposed box then opened right up, revealing the MacBook Pro nestled in a molded cardboard holder.  Upon removing the laptop, I exposed the power cord, power brick, and manual.  I plugged the power brick into the wall, attached the power cord to the MacBook Pro, then powered it up.  In the last photo you see the first setup screen – I was all ready to go.  Apple did it again!  I'd have to give them an “awesome!” were I grading their OOB experience...

The sprinkler contractor has been working hard, and now with a fully functional trenching machine he's making great progress.  Our yard south of our house is now a maze of trenches that look like they were laid out by madmen.  One guy is trenching, the other is laying pipe into the new trenches.  In the last photo below, you can see the newly graded piece next to my barn.  We decided today to irrigate that area as well, and to plant grass there.

This morning I stopped in at Glen's Electric to pick up the pump mounting pad and the constant pressure controller (a variable frequency drive for the pump motor tied to a pressure sensor).  Then I built a wooden frame (using most of two 8' 2x6s and two 8' 2x4s) to hold the pump mounting pad, and to provide for the anti-vibration pads to go between the wooden frame and the floor of my cedar shed (photos below; finished mount in the last photo).  This was easy and quite a bit of fun, as I got to use both the miter and bevel capabilities of my miter saw to their fullest.  The finished product is significantly over-built – that pump won't be wandering off on its own! :)