More Like Ti-gross!

I finally installed Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, on my super 20-inch G4 iMac, to spectacularly bad results. Lulled by a snappy, issue-free install on my Powerbook, I decided to upgrade the iMac without so much as backing up my web browser bookmarks.

(NOTE: This was my own stupid fault, by the way. Always backup and install clean; you never know what third party programs and your own futzing have done to your system. So, why would I expect the Apple installer to know all the fine details of what I've done to my machine over the past two years? I've tried to write software that looks for all contingencies of a situation at work--and it NEVER gets everything.)

The actual install, from ONE nifty DVD (rather than countless CDs that would have most likely migrated to separate parts of the apartment), was quick and painless--just a progress bar stating that all was well.

Then I restarted the computer.

The opening screen never showed up. So, like all good troubleshooters, I turned off the computer and got some water to drink. Upon turning it back on, the startup screen appeared and I breathed a sigh of relief, until it froze halfway through displaying the icons on my desktop.

On a third restart, I could finally use programs. I immediately fired up the Mac web browser, Safari, to find out if others had similar experiences. Much to my surprise, my normal web browsing font had been replaced by something close to what you'd expect magistrates to write WANTED posters for pirates' heads. And all the lines of text were layered on top of each other...so that was fun.

It became increasingly clear to me that I needed an exit strategy, a backup plan of sorts. So, I fired up my backup program--amazingly, on the Mac, entitled "Backup", with a cute little rainy-day umbrella for a logo--and got all the necessary documents burned to a DVD for safety. Or so I thought. The DVDs burned ended up being empty and then "finalized", which, on a DVD-R, means "I have made this useless trash, thank me later."

So, I had to have a contingency plan for file escape. So I tried an ad hoc wireless network between Justin's old Powerbook and my iMac.

Let's just say that it wasn't going very fast.

So, change of plans #14, I made the old Powerbook act like a Firewire hard drive and used Backup to make a backup file on my "external hard drive".

That was when I noticed that many of my upgrade "issues" were preying on the very same processes that affected file transfer--my backup froze and I had to restart the computer.

To make this very, very long story shorter, suffice it to say that:

1) I restarted the iMac 8 more times.
2) I threw away 4 DVD-R's by the end of the night (morning?)
3) Half of my files are on the old Powerbook
4) Half were burned onto DVD's, not with Backup, but by dropping them on the DVD, pressing burn, and lighting candles.

And once all my files were out?

I razed that hard drive to the ground (reformatted), and installed Tiger on a clean machine.

Not so surprisingly, it flies like no one's business...and no Pirate font...I didn't like the pirate font.