Well that felt kinda weird... Upgraded to Mountain Lion from Leopard

We had this ancient mac mini running lion.
Used to drive our TV until we got a new one.
It's been sitting in a box gathering dust for ages.
Anyway, I wanted to use it for a ton of stuff like running Ubuntu VMs and Nexus, Jenkins, Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss et al.
So...
Can't do it directly.
Have to upgrade to Snow Leopard first to get the AppStore.
Rats.
Hmm.
Dug around through piles of stuff and discovered a Snow Leopard disk.
Yey!
Ooops.
When popped in, the CD rattled and ground around.
Popped out.
Cleaned.
Popped back in.
Shake, Rattle and Grind.
Popped out.
Another clean.
Considering using peanut butter when...
Popped in and "Hey!" got the installer.
Whining... Spin up... Spin down... Spin up... etc...
45 minutes later...
Well it says its installed...
Reboot.

Hmm. Faint blue screen for ages now.
Odd. The mouse shows movement.
I'll give it a bit longer.
Meanwhile our new DroboFS is making agricultural noises... Must look into that...

Ok. Given it 10 minutes. Must have hung on something. Hard reboot seems to be Sophies choice.
Ok. Ok. I'll give it a couple more minutes.
Wait! What was that noise? Sounded like the DVD drive twiddled...
Couple more minutes.

Well whaddaya know.... The login box appeared!
Login' in!
Oh no! The Spinning Beachball of Death!

10 minutes later...
Oh wow.
It did it!
Setup assistant has appeared! No sound because it has no speakers, but what the heck.
That music drives me nuts anyway...
X. A big X!
Apple->About shows 10.6! Yey!
Right. Updates are de-rigeur at this point...
Ah... Software update... The slowest app in the world...
Excellent. Updates happ'n!
15 minutes? I gotta wait 15 minutes? Oh yeah... Of course... I remember installing SunOS 4.1 on a piece of big iron. 4 x 1/4inch tapes. Took all day... Impatience thy name is Kim...
Well that's it. I'm off to have some cheese and a glass of wine.

Ok. I'm back. Double Gloucester, Tasty Cheddar and a glass of Pinot Noir.
Dammit. Still Updating. And no AppStore Icon!
Ah crap. An error occurred. Can't access update server. Oh well. Try again.
Spinning Beachball of Death!
Well at least I had some cheese.
More agricultural noises from the new DroboFS... Dammit.
Oh! iPhone SDK license appeared. Clicked Ok.
And... Back to the dreaded Spinning Beachball of Death...
Ah. Login required! Sudo abounds!
Ok. Done...
8 minutes left...
Dammit! "The Update Combined Could not be Saved"
Damn. Damn. Ok. Try again with an eject of the Snow Leopard disc and a restart...
Argh! Installs left to update before restart and I was turned away before it counted down!
Crosses fingers...
The "CHUNG" noise has arrived.
Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...
And... Login!
Apple->Updates!
Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...
Downloading 1.09Gb of updates...
Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...
Ok. Off for more cheese... And wine... Really must look into those noises from the DroboFS...

TaDa! Installed! Reboot...
Oh my elder god... The "CHUNG" sound! It might have worked...
Well... Hallo AppStore Icon!
Wait. Wait. Must check to make sure we're completely up to date...
Damn but software update is slow. Well at least on this mac mini...
(It's called MINI for a reason people :-)
Damn that's a lot of updates. Oh well. Off we go...
600Mb? Oh well...
Might as well put together these puzzles I bought from ALDI (ASDA in the UK).
Saturn 5, Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module.
Damn. One of the LEMs legs is busted. SupaGlue to the rescue!
Oh well. My tribute to Neil. I got to see him put his foot down on the moon in 1969. Least I could do.
They're not bad puzzles. Chunky. Nice. I'll post photos later.

And updates done. Restart!

Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...

Any cheese left? Sigh. It's almost time to start making meatballs and spaghetti...

CHUNG!

Login...

Oh crap "Adobe Flash Player is out of date"

Well no sh*t Sherlock.

Screw it. Later.

Any more updates?

No! Cool. Ok. AppStore here we come...

Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!

We have AppStore login. Ok. Let's see if this works...

I choose you Mountain Lion!

Ok. We have credit card requests. Lookin' good.

Damn where's my CC?

Well it accepted my CC. Twiddly whirling thing in action at this stage...

No other signs of activity so far...

Damn is the twiddly rotating thing the only sign of progress?

Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... 

Damn. Thinking about going downstairs to start dinner.

Ah. Just noticed the little Mountain Lion icon on the bottom bar.

Tiniest spot of blue on the download.

Sigh. Long way to go.

Off to make meatballs and spaghetti.

Well the meatballs are made and ready.

The sauce is ready.

The spaghetti is started.

Still only 1/3rd downloaded...

Sigh...

Back after 15mins.

2/3rd downloaded.

Back again after another 5mins.

Hallo. Big Mountain Lion screen has appeared.

Continue. Agree. Agree. Install. Enter password.

3minutes? Microsoft Minutes? Or Apple Minutes?

Waiting...

Oh for Cthulhu's sake.

Finished dinner.

Slipping into food coma.

But it's still installing.

"About a minute" has been about 15 frickin' minutes.

Definitely Microsoft minutes on this machine.

Oh. Wait. We're down to "Less than a minute."

Well. Less than a minute later (where a minute is defined as the lifetime of the universe) it stated it worked.

So.

Let's reboot.

Wait. What? It did it by itself.

Damn. Typing so I didn't see it.

Hey! The login appears. Can I log in?

Yup.

Crap. Apple ID request. Well, hey, you don't need it at this stage...

And...

Done...

Suck-Frickin-Cess.

The whole thing kinda felt like Blackhawk Lion Down.
Or more like Neo walking up as a battery pulling a tube out of the back of his head...
Or even more like finding out you have a prosthetic limb and some bimbo has torn it off and is bashing you with it.
Something like that.
That really happens by the way.
Being beaten up with your own prosthetic limb I mean.
I'll post a link... Later...

Eventually worked but what a frickin' drama.
My fault entirely.
Should have kept up to date.
I *should* be used to this having 35 years of experience, but I am still amazed when stuff actually works.

So.
Rules for upgrading from Leopard to Mountain Lion...

1) Have a Snow Leopard disc.
2) Prepare your meatballs.
3) Have two, yes TWO, bottles of wine ready.
4) Make dinner.
5) Wait.
6) Have dinner.
7) Enjoy it.
8) Go to bed feeling satisfaction that it all finally worked.
9) Wake up in a shock at 3am when you realise you still have to install JDK7, Groovy, Grails, Ruby, Rails et al.
10) Screw it. Go back to sleep.