David A. Windham thumbnail

Ovid

I bit the bullet and picked up a new MacBook Pro yesterday. The electricity at my house went out and I called my neighbor to confirm that it wasn’t just our house.  He put his wife on the phone who wanted to ask me about getting a new computer, since for whatever reason I always get computer questions this time of year. She said “he got a new Mac Pro last year and suggested I get a Chromebook”. I asked to be put on speaker phone and I laughed out loud after I told him not to cheap out on her new computer.  Needless to say, the power outage and that conversation were just enough to spur me into action. 

The first thing I noticed when I opened the Apple site was that they announced a $10 million dollar contribution and lawsuit against the NSO group which was just more evidence that financially supporting Apple is in my best interests. I only made a month after the M1 Pro Announcement. The model I had been looking for happened to be about the only one in stock and within driving distance. I’d been preparing for the ARM transition1 by preparing my old computers2 since purchasing an ARM tablet3. I was kinda tempted to wait until the M1Pro processors made it into the Mini because I found that I mostly work from my desk, but the power outage was a good reminder of why it’s nice to have a permanent battery backup.  I did my due diligence on the benchmarks and the M1max and 32GB are a waste unless you’re consistently working with things like rendering 3d textures or color correction in 4k.  I got a silver 16”/10core/16GB/1TB. When the gal at the Apple store asked me what I’d be using it for, I said “email” and “surfing the web”.  She sorta gave me a strange look as to why I might have gone overkill.

I’m usually a bit of a late adopter and I’m pretty thrifty when it comes to computers. I rarely upgrade unless needed. This computer is replacing a 2013 2GHz i7 which was just now starting to have some very minor issues. Eight years is not a bad lifespan for a laptop. This is only my third personal MacBook Pro with almost eight years between each of them. I’ve now had six MacBook Pros including my work issued laptops. My first was a 2007 17” 2.33GHz Core Duo. It’s still running perfectly fine when I loaded it up last week to consolidate my backup files. After eight years on each, the only issue I ever suffered was a bit of battery swell from the constant usage and the lack of cycling the batteries properly. One was replaced for free on the 2007 model and I’ll do the repair on the 2013 model myself so I can keep it running as well. I managed to miss the touch bar, butterfly keyboard, and the non-magsafe versions. 

Above is a screenshot of my previous machines. All of them are still running perfectly fine and one still had the date set to 2007. I hope this one last me another eight years. I’m a stickler for documentation and I’ve started some notes on the setup and transition which I’ll publish for reference6. I’m pretty particular about naming my machines6,7 and after working with this one for a bit, I’ve decided to name it Ovid. 

First off, it’s short and easy to type with one hand per key in order, it shares the last three characters of my first name, and makes a subtle period reference to ’Covid’. But most importantly, it’s symbolic. Ovid8 ( Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō  43BC – 17AD ) authored Metamorphosis9. In it, he insists that ‘audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat’ ( Venus, like fortune, favors the bold ) elevating the role of love, belief, and chance while the other gods are ridiculed. The current macOS version, Monterey reminds me of epitome of the summer of love. I’ve tried to connect to this sorta state of mind in dealing with circumstance. “He who can believe himself well, will be well”; “Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish”;”If you are not ready today, you will be even less so tomorrow”. The reason I thought about Ovid, is that I had been recently reading a good bit about the five rivers of Hades because a local farm, originally named after the river Lethe, had been in the news9. Ovid and Virgil wrote that Lethe was the river of ‘forgetfulness’ bordered by Elysium, the resting place of the virtuous10. Lethe flowed through Hypnos, the god of sleep and that the dead drank from the river Lethe so that they forget earthly life to be reincarnated. 

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit
( All things change, nothing perishes )

― Ovid, Metamorphoses11
  1. Arm – https://davidawindham.com/arm/
  2. Magic – https://davidawindham.com/til/docs/computers/magic
  3. iPad – https://davidawindham.com/ipad/
  4. Late Adopter – https://davidawindham.com/late-adopter/
  5. Today I Learned / Ovid – https://davidawindham.com/til/docs/computers/ovid
  6. Dotfiles – https://code.davidawindham.com/david/dotfiles 
  7. Anthropomorphizing Machines – https://davidawindham.com/anthropomorphizing-machines/
  8. Ovid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
  9. John De La Howe – http://schpr.sc.gov/index.php/Detail/properties/44370 
  10. Lethe – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethe 
  11. Metamorphoses Ovid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses