Rackafrackafrickafrack, Chapter 3

Well, my old computer is back home from the shop today…unfortunately, with a reinstalled operating system and NONE of my work saved. My novel draft is as good as gone, and if I want it back, I’ll probably have to return to Peterborough to try scavenging the old hard drive again–probably only to be told it’s hopeless, as it was this time. Meanwhile, I have to reinstall all my programs, system configurations, etc., from scratch, which I’m SO not looking forward to. I don’t have that many hours in a day!

I already tried FireWire-ing my other computer to it, to see if I could at least transfer my MSOffice software, Firefox, etc. Nada! Couldn’t even get the hard disks to show up, much less copy anything from the one to the other. What the hell am I doing wrong? The very least two Macs should be able to do is talk to one another, but they won’t!

As I recall, this was also the reason I couldn’t transfer my works-in-progress from the “old” computer to the “new” one before the old hard drive bit the dust. I gave up without trying it again because I hate having to restart. Which shouldn’t be necessary if the damn thing were only working right.

Damn FireWire, syncing, OS “upgrades”, the whole pile of shit–worse than worthless for all they tout it so much. If they could only make stuff that works and goes on working, I wouldn’t care what it looked like. OS upgrades are just extra bugs, as far as I’m concerned.

To make matters worse, I can’t even reset my system preferences on the one I’m using right now, the one that was my stopgap during the Great Crash. I was briefly able to reset them to get the AirPort to work, and now that’s no longer functioning either–and when I try to get into System Preferences, the thing gets stuck just as I’m selecting the network. It refuses to remember it, refuses to let me configure anything–it just fucking HANGS. And when I try to force-quit it, it wants to send an error message that, of course, won’t get through because I CAN’T MAKE THE FUCKING AIRPORT WORK!!!

So now I’m back to plugging in the hated and hateful Ethernet cable. Which I hate to do, as it’s just one more step that shouldn’t be necessary.

To say I’m heartbroken, enraged and plain frustrated doesn’t even begin to cover it. Why me? Why now? Why my computers, which I’ve been taking such good care of? Why won’t they give me some love? WHY????