Last Day of Packing

Today was supposed to be the last day of packing. I start with the entire prep-work at 9 am and was sure that would be a piece of cake. Well there's an old German saying that seems to apply here: 'Erstens kommt alles ganz anders, und zweitens als man denkt". Loosely translated it means that things never work out the way the plan them.
I knew before I could even start to pack the box with the electronics I had to create a 'Master Volume' of the combined external hard drives and then clone the 'Master Volume'. It's so so much that it would be difficult to do, but it takes quite a lot of time. By 6 pm the Master Volume was finished and I was ready to clone it. First I had to create encrypted and password protected disk images. Certain files are of a private and personal nature and no nosy customs official has any business looking at them. That was the main reason why I went down that road. Creating all the necessary disk images with a really good encryption takes hours. While that was happening I had planned to pick up additional packing supplies. While I was at the store I got an email that the credit card payment for s previous purchase had been declined. It has to do Chase's Fraud Protection and the way they handle the small amount credit card charges fir iTunes. So I didn't even bother to try and since I didn't have any cash on me, I could only head back home empty handed. It goes without saying that I was anything but happy about that.
So I texted Kenny and he offered to pick up the packing supplies on his way home. During that time I was continuing to create encrypted disk images and was making good progress. At that time I was quite hopeful that I wouldn't have to pull an all nighter. Later Kenny called and told me the office supply store was out of packing noodles / peanuts. The only place I could think of might have some was the Lowe's next door. We decided that, if he couldn't find any packing noodles he would bring home several rolls of bubble wrap. By the time Kenny got home and brought El Pollo for dinner. That's probably the last time I will be having El Pollo in a very long time. After dinner we watched the latest episode of Eureka. It was another great episode. Later we read on Twitter that SyFy had just cancelled Eureka...that's absolutely devastating news.
But I had to go back and deal with the cloning of my external hard drives. Around 11.30 PM I was done creating encrypted disk images and started transferring the files into the appropriate disk image. Transferring files between 2 external hard drives via USB is awfully slow and time consuming. If I could have used FireWire for that I would have been so much faster. But since those 2 hard drives don't offer me that option, well there was no reason bitching about that. You just have to suck it up and deal with it. At that point it was pretty much clear to me that I have no other choice than to pull an all nighter.
To be continued...