I moved the whole family down to Tucson, AZ from Hanna, WY for February 2009. My wife's packing was a resounding success. She didn't forget a single thing. Of the things I was responsible for, I only forgot one: the power adapter to my Mac Mini. It turns out that no single item in our packing list was more important. That's because Apple uses a proprietary power connector for the Mini. Nobody in Phoenix or Tucson carries them.
The online Apple Store sells them and they "ship within 24 hours", so I ordered one on Tuesday. On Thursday morning, I got an email saying that it won't ship for 7-10 more business days. I called Simutek (a local Apple retailer) to see if I could buy a Mac Mini from them, use the power cord for a week and then sell them back the Mini as "used" when I was done with the adapter. Instead of accepting my desperate offer and making a quick $200, they offered to rent me the power adapter off one of their floor models for $5/day. Sweet! I promptly canceled my order through the Apple Store and ordered the adapter from Simutek.
Now to the point of this post: lessons I learned from this situation and what I can do better if there's a "next time."
- be more careful in packing (mentally walk through the unpacking process)
- unpack as soon as possible to provide extra time for acquiring replacement parts
- push all Git branches off to the cloud somewhere to reduce dependency on a single hard drive
- in time critical situations, it's valuable to work with a real person who can elevate his research to make sure that important deadlines are met
- don't design something with a proprietary interface if a standard interface can do the job
