After a nightmare journey, I arrived at the parental abode around 7pm yesterday. (The nightmares were all self-inflicted and I don’t intend to talk about them in a public online space. But email if you want to know.)

Achieved so far

• Sorted dad’s desk so he doesn’t need to bend down to restart the mac or plug in new devices.
  • Put mac mini on desk’s keyboard shelf, with the back facing out.
  • Rationalised plugs and cables.
  • Took all the electronica out of the office in preparation for the following step. USB Peripherals are
    • optical drive
    • keyboard
    • iPad
    • external HD
    • printer
    • webcam
    • miniSD card
    • bluetooth earphone charger
    • TomTom charger
    • camera card reader.
  • Drilled a hold in the top of the desk for the keyboard cable
  • Drilled four holes in the keyboard shelf for cable-ties to hold the USB hub in place.
  • Replaced all the electronica and made sure it works. For example, the iPad won’t charge unless it’s connected to a mac USB port, even though the USB hub is powered.
• Got Reflector working so the iPad’s display can be mirrored to the on the mac (so I can see it remotely). Wrote a how-to.
• Updated iTunes to work with iOS7, which dad’s iPad now runs.
• Connected bluetooth earphones to iPad

Still to go

• put TimeMachine backups on separate device from nightly CarbonCopyCloner clones
• set up and demonstrate AppleTV
• connect printer to mac wirelessly
• show how to remove photos from iPad

And I need to spend time on sister’s finances and filing. Yeehah!