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I’ve been sort of buried in the imponderables of tech for a couple of days. I was raised in the era when, if something went wrong, you hauled out the manual, figured out what was what, and then you fixed it. We were all pioneers back then. Our Apple IIs and IBM ATs were silicon Conestoga wagons that we drove into the unknown, and woe be he who didn’t know a C colon backslash from the proverbial hole in the ground. Nowadays, especially in the Apple universe, the pioneer is the old geezer rocking on the porch, gently dreaming of the past with little idea how the present is getting on. So when something goes kablooey, the frustration level is way higher than those olden days. Then, we knew we could fix it. Now, we just hit buttons at random until something happens and everything settles down again. It’s not half as much fun as it used to be.

As I wrote a little while ago, my battery was running down too quickly in my iPhone, and Marc correctly explained about the IOS bug, so I marginally fixed it. Then, when the IOS update came along that really fixed it, I jumped.

Don’t ask. Took all night to sort that one out. Everything back to normal now, and my battery life is better than ever, but I’ve got the scars that go along with it.

As the phone was dancing across its particular minefield, needless to say, it took the computer along with it. Lots of banging head against wall until that got sorted out. The only thing that I seemed to be able to do was go into the Windows 7 shell, where everything was working fine. When Windows 7 becomes your safe zone, you know you’re in trouble. Again, the worst is over, but more scars were incurred.

And what about Javascript, you ask. Don’t ask. I was trying to buy tickets to the local Shakespeare festival, and well nigh selected seats on every computer within a twenty mile radius before I finally gave up trying and lucked into an alternate approach that yielded, sigh, the same tickets I was trying to select manually. Javascript is dangerous enough, but try to upgrade it on a locked DJ machine. I already run half a dozen applications out of Documents rather than Applications to bypass the bureaucracy (they hate when you do that, but the alternative, not having the application, is not acceptable). But some things have to run out of Applications. Again, back to the modern locked world of the Apple or I guess any proprietary universe. Do it their way, or just don’t do it.

I wish someone would get on my lawn. I’d go hang out with them and pretend that I’m young again.

Meanwhile, PJ pointed in a comment to a decent starting solution to my PF issue. I’ll address that formally shortly.