In which I share my hatred of computers

I’ve been crowing a lot about the high points in my life. I figure I’ll go ahead and share a frustration:

I accidentally “upgraded” my laptop to OS X Server on Tuesday.

This was terrifyingly easy. Usually, Apples will tend to be irritatingly careful. The more lethal a particular action, the more times you have to confirm and re-confirm. “Really?” “Seriously?” “You’re sure about this?” In this case, I double clicked on the wrong installer (I wanted the server administrative tools, not Server itself). One quick root password later, and I was rebooting into the “Welcome to your brand new installation of OS X Server” screen.

Fortunately, I know my way around the OS, so I was able to convince it that I don’t really need a Server license. Doubly fortunate: It didn’t wipe my home directory along the way. I’ve still got all my stuff, my machine is just really confused about which software updates to apply. My plan is to “upgrade” it back to the normal version over the weekend. If I can get hold of a big enough firewire disk, I’ll wipe it and do a clean install. Hey, redmed isn’t using her iPod right now…that’s got space…

So now all kinds of dumb things are happening. My “Drafts” folder in the Mail application just said I had FOURTEEN draft messages, sitting unfinished. So I clicked on it to see what these were. It quietly corrected itself down to THREE. “oopsie.” My apps are crashing, things are stalling and unstable, and I’m generally fighting with my machine instead of mind-melding with it.

Bah.