If only.

So, after downloading Apple’s latest update(s) last week and finding everything going blooey right after installing it, I have spent much of the ensuing period trying to get things back to where they were. Finding out later I wasn’t the only person experiencing those problems was little comfort.

You would think I would know better having been down this road before with one of Apple’s security updates. It was around the same time last year, I downloaded a Security Update (it was in March) and wound up with the dreaded kernel panic, a machine that starts up, loads and then just sits there unable to launch into the finder.

Gggggrrrrreeeeeaaaatttttt!

Well, since that time last year I have at least had the intelligence to keep working files (read jobs) on a separate drive so I can still get at things if I need to wipe a drive and reinstall system software. Reinstalling system software isn’t a problem, it’s what happens afterwards that creates a big deal. All the passwords, preferences and the way the computer operates through the main user account are just gone.

Well, I’ve managed to get things mostly back to where they need to be. I’m really, really close. I’m starting to finally learn a helluva lot more about what goes where and what does what in OS X but, I am still nowhere near where I was in terms of knowledge of the prior versions of the Mac operating systems (read as OS 6 through OS 9). So, I imagine there is something good that came out of all of this.

The only thing that is truly bothering me at the moment is that I may have deleted all my email in the process over the last few days! Even after recovering some stuff from the trash (already deleted) I’m still having trouble recovering the actual mail files. I may have to go back in again and try to do another unerase but, at least I can get stuff done like I could before I installed the stupid updates.

In the process though, I have to acknowledge gaining a great deal of really good info from the MacFixIt website. I cannot recommend the site highly enough. As a matter of fact, I was having some problems with Quark today (everything is still a bit buggy after shunting things over to a secondary drive) and through information gleaned on the MacFixIt site was able to quickly and easily identify and correct the problem! I almost feel in control the way I did with OS 9!