I guess I’m a PC…..

Secondly, let me say that I broke down and bought a brand-new Sony
Vaio over the weekend because of the computer problems I've been having all
summer (i.e. partitioned Mac, shonky setup, computer virus, computer meltdown,
punctured tire while trying to repair and switch over to be totally Mac).  Once
I got there I found that Quicken for Mac was too outdated to open any of the
financial data I was able to recover during the meltdown, that the now-pure Mac
would now not cooperate with my printer even though it was printing fine when it
thought it was a PC, and that all of the email I salvaged was saved as Windows,
so couldn't be imported into Entourage, and finally, the hard drive onto which I
backed everything up (from PC) was write-only on the Mac side, so I could pull
stuff off of it which I then could not save.   Also, no emulator I found would
install properly, blah blah blah.

I've literally been trying to get the
whole thing to work since July, and I don't consider myself to be the kind of
person who gives yp easily, but there's only so much one person can take of "how
come you didn't answer my email" or "why are you not posting to your blog" or
"let me just print that out….oh, I can't.".  This frustration grew to the
point where even the simplest task involved multiple steps and/ or was
impossible, and then on Friday I decided that the net effect and lack of
productivity was ridiculous, and I admitted defeat.

And, no lie, in two
days with that Sony Vaio I am more caught up with every single thing than I have
been in months.  I can print, and save, and open all my archived email, and it
feels like a choir of angels is singing every time I turn on my computer, even
though I have to admit, I am no fan of Vista and am totally going to do the
Windows 7 upgrade.  This has improved my mood exponentially, and so is totally
worth any ribbing I am assuredly going to take from die hard mac purists who
think I should have tried harder.   Don't care.  Can print.  Can open Quicken,
and cumulatively only have to rebuild 6 lost months, rather than STARTING ALL
OVER with Quicken for Mac.  Life easier.  Attitude better.  Response time
improved.  Blog posts happening.  End of story.

But also, we are going to
have to talk in another post about how during the latest re-build, I discovered
that I have become the electronic version of one of those hoarders you see on
tv, with the 8,000 packets of Equal and the maze made of newspapers inside their
house.  One person does not need four backed up copies of everything they've
ever written, ok?  Granted, I did this by mistake, but when I discovered it,
even I was embarrassed.

So, that's it.  Problem solved.  Mac experiment
concluded.