Everyone has a bad day with technology now and then. Today just happened to be mine. And it happened to be one of the worst I've had in memory. Ever. I'm trying to make too many changes all at once and have set up a recipe for disaster.

First, I changed cell phones. Nothing new there, as my cellular provider allows me to do this every 10 months with the extension of my contract. But this time I have decided to begin using the data capabilities of my cell phone. I've experienced too many times over the past year where I could not get to a network connection. And surfing in hotel rooms over dial-up modems is not acceptable any longer.

So the first problem is caused by having a newish cell phone with no third party or easily traced Apple support. The second part of the problem is trying to interface to my Apple Powerbook.

For some reason, that seems driven by insanity at this point, I've also chosen today to move from OS X Jaguar to the new Panther release. Okay, it's not so new now and I've had months to make the switch. I fully intended to make this a Christmas vacation project and take a leisurely pace. No chance.

I received some advice about how to make the upgrade. And some advice that it would be best to completely reinstall Panther. After some personal mental gymnastics and debate I decided that there just isn't enough time available to do anything other than upgrade.

With this decision I set out to do a massive amount of backing up and some extensive sleuthing through my hard drive to get rid of potentially problematic third party programs. It turned out that getting rid of my AEGIC client seemed to be absolutely necessary.

I won't go into the nasty details. Generally, I spent a good four hours messing around with this project. By late evening it was clear that I would not be able to get my powerbook ready for an upgrade. So, I decided to tackle another project that has been looming large. I need to move both of my Radio accounts to my new powerbook. One is on an existing powerbook, the other on my PC at work. So I jumped right in and soon discovered that I don't have either of my passwords and can't get them today.

I'm in a technical mess. Frustrated and ready to run away and find a job that doesn't require the use of computers, computer applications or cell phones...........
9:27:46 PM    comment []