The Voyage of my Mac mini

From UPS’s tracking information for my Mac mini package, here’s the voyage it took to get to Charlottetown from Shenzhen, China:

Google Map screen shot showing stops my Mac mini took to get from China to me

The package started in Shenzhen, China, leaving late on Saturday, November 3 and arriving at Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong on the next morning, Sunday, November 4.

After spending the day in Hong Kong, the package left for Taoyuan, Taiwan Sunday evening, spent a few hours there, and then left for the USA.

It arrived in Anchorage, Alaska on Monday afternoon, spent three hours there, and then left for Louisville, Kentucky, where it arrived just after midnight on Tuesday, November 6.

The package spent a day in Louisville, leaving for Canada early Wednesday morning and arriving at Mirabel International Airport in Montreal just before breakfast.

After confusingly-reported customs formalities in Montreal (“We currently have the package. The receiver requested clearance by a non-UPS broker. / As requested, the package was transferred to a Free Trade Zone or a non-UPS broker.”), it left for Dieppe, New Brunswick on Wednesday morning, arriving mid-morning Wednesday.

The package began the last leg of its trip this morning at 4:30 a.m., leaving Dieppe for Charlottetown, where it arrived at 6:45 a.m. and went on a truck for delivery to my house.

Total distance traveled, give or take, was 12,000 km in 5 days.

Comments

Ton Zijlstra's picture
Ton Zijlstra on November 8, 2018 - 12:46 Permalink

12000km in 5 days, how's that in terms of bandwidth when we assume it had a full HD? ;) (reminds me of the old comparison that sending a maximum allowable package of DVD by snail mail for 24 hr delivery, it would beat the bandwidth of most household internet connections. Although I think my fiber to the home connection maybe now surpasses that.)

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on November 8, 2018 - 13:07 Permalink

Amazon, as you might imagine given the breadth of its Web Services business, has a service called AWS Snowball, that’s a cousin of the DVD-in-the-mail approach:

With Snowball, you don’t need to write any code or purchase any hardware to transfer your data. Simply create a job in the AWS Management Console (“Console”) and a Snowball device will be automatically shipped to you. Once it arrives, attach the device to your local network, download and run the Snowball Client (“Client”) to establish a connection, and then use the Client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the device. The Client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the device at high speed. Once the transfer is complete and the device is ready to be returned, the E Ink shipping label will automatically update and you can track the job status via Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), text messages, or directly in the Console.