I Hate Software!

Last spring I wanted to upgrade our Safari software from level 1 to level 2, where you get things like Google Earth and there isn't as much crashing. But that meant upgrading our OS X 10.3 Panther operating system by buying 10.4 Tiger. So I went to a computer store, where they told me 10.5 Leopard was coming out in October. So then I waited another six months, ordered it online, and got a disc in the first week of its release. But when I tried to install it, it turned out our computer didn't have enough ROM.

So I waited a few more weeks, then Father and I drove out to Queen Street East to buy a new gig of ROM at a computer store we'd been to before. I was going to get my hair cut that afternoon, but decided it could wait. When we got to the area, it turned out the store wasn't there anymore. (Why didn't we check the net first?) So we went home, and by that time it was too late in the day to try anywhere else or to get my hair cut. I was 0 for 2 that day.

Eventually we did get the new ROM, so I installed Leopard. Or rather, I tried to install Leopard, but the installation couldn't be completed for some reason that still isn't clear to me. And the frustrating thing was that I couldn't figure out how to get back to Panther. I'm lucky that my brother Donald is a professional computer technician, and as usual it took him to figure everything out.

We ended up getting Diskwarrior software to reorganize the computer without losing files, and an auxiliary hard disc. It was decided that we should copy everything onto the auxiliary and clear the first hard disc before trying again to install Leopard on the latter. I emptied the first hard disc after copying everything, but the computer wouldn't even wait until I tried installing Leopard again before going haywire! Just after the disc was cleared, the computer ended up in a kernel panic, and I had to phone the Apple people to figure out what to do. (I'm so knowledgeable about computers that I thought it was spelled "Colonel Panic.") I even made a new installation attempt because I figured there was nothing left to lose.

Again it took my brother to set things right. I hate depending on other people to solve these problems, and really wish I could rely on myself. I got so frazzled about the computer that I had a strong bout of insomnia, and as I lay abed still awake I could hear my sister getting up. And then we started having Safari crash on us more and more, until it reached the point where it was automatically crashing on being opened, so we had to switch to Internet Explorer and Foxfire for a while. Also, there's some bad apple in our applications that keeps me from using the disk utility to set all the permissions in order. Donald managed to restore Safari, but can't figure out the disk utility problem as yet.

There've been quite a few complaints about Leopard. Donald says Apple is expected to release an updated version of Leopard this month to patch all those bugs people have been complaining about. No doubt I'll be able to exchange our Leopard disc for the newer version. But I suspect that in our case it's the disc itself is defective, as our problems with it have gone so far beyond normal. I'll tell them that a witch has put a spell on it, and advise them to send its atoms into the outer void.

Oh, for an abacus!

Rocky: "They don't call him 'Wrong-Way Peachfuzz' for nothing!" Bullwinkle: "You mean you have to pay?"