Updating old technology for tax season: The horror! The horror!

I'm about to upgrade to El Capitán/High Sierra, as my trusty Mac OS companion of 8.5 years, Snow Leopard, is no longer long of tooth, but bereft of any pearly whites whatsoever. The latest discovery that the Intel chip has a back door, much to the delight of Hackers Anon, means every technological agency is tightening up bootstraps in order to stick their big toes (and cocks—whatever is largest) to shoal up the wall of data vulnerability.

And in turn, data service providers are also tightening things up. This translates to my web browser Firefox being no longer upgradeable, Safari  5 is next to useless, having long since lost The Great Browser Race. I can't even load a Daily Kos petition because my browser's too old and therefore "vulnerable." I can see tighter security needed if I'm actually donating money (I'm not), but to fill out a petition? And who knew that MacWorld articles were top secret documents FYEO fergawdsakes? (For your eyes only.)

Then there's the new and improved software: take TurboTax. Ah, yes, the tax season rears its ugly head, and shoves it up yer arse looking for fool's gold. That's the litmus I use to update software. When I need to load TurboTax. That's how I updated another hard drive to Mountain Lion, and later, to Mavericks.

Suffice to say, I hated both Mountain Lion, and Mavericks with a passion (I hated all the OS updates until Catalina), but I managed to convince TurboTax to play nicely on my MacBook, so I could file my taxes. Sort of. (BTW, TurboTax did not require such stringent hoops for Windows users during this time. And we KNOW how vulnerable Windows is. My partner has an old PC laptop with a crusty virus-ridden version of Windows that still runs TurboTax. What's with that?)

So, after I blithely purchased this year's version of TurboTax, I read the FINE PRINT. Minuscule. Unreadable without a microscope, or #2 readers, whatever's handiest. Minimum system requirements, written in 6 point white type on grey background: such secretive minimum operating system requirement: OS 10.11. Whoa, Nellie! That's El Capitán. O Captain! My Captain! Decapitate me now.

We went from the rogue sneaker waves of Mavericks, that's OS 10.9 to you, to the heights of Machu Pucchu, I mean—that mile-high monolith, that sheer granite wall of El Capitán, AKA OS 10.11, that has challenged so many climbers—in one fell swoop? In one year? What happened to OS 10.10? Holy crappy crampons! The Krampus came late this year. Or he came back for seconds.

So, (remembering to breathe), I took a shot, and steeled my nerves. I girded my loins, and began to upgrade a hard drive to El Capitán. Painful. After more than an hour of upgrading, it worked swimmingly. Until it didn't. This I found out after I went two OS'es further down the plankety-plank road to perdition, to the holiest grail of OS of time present—High Sierra, AKA OS 10.13. Lucky 13, it wasn't. I was locked out. Epic password fail. Black screen. Spinning cursor of death. Random restarts. Complete disappearance of the Finder. Again. And again. And again.

So I spent an entire day (and most of the next day too), trying to coax two fussy operating systems to play nicely on my souped-up 2011 MacBook Pro. I learned some things. New tricks, old dawg. I practiced deep rebuilds and even deeper cleanses. I gnashed my teeth. I invented new portmanteaus swearwords. Corrupted kext files? I found combo update fixes. Suffice to say, El Capitán is now working. Or at least, I can load it. I haven't even opened TurboTax. Too exhausted. I'm afraid to even restart High Sierra.

Ah, well, there's always next year.

Meanwhile, I decided to also organize and upgrade my old poetry teaching files. (I'm running out of room on the hard drive.) Yup, even more Unix executable files. I swear they're breeding. After some seriously deep panicking, I found some workarounds and was able to open a few of those proprietery binary beasties via TextEdit, (Works 2, Word, 4, Appleworks, and, get this—AOL files—what was I thinking?), but no joy on any graphics files. I even played with Terminal scripts. Dangerous. Where's Chris Breen when you need him?

Come to think of it, all this MacMadness began to go south when I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger. Yes, I resist updating my software early and often. If it ain't broke.... I loved Tiger OS 10.4, but it died along with PPC Macs, and I also loved the pre-PPC version, OS 8.6, OS 9, not so much.

This is how I got into this massive file rescue project in the first place, when, in 2015, I attempted to open my old poetry files, only to find random ASCII madness embedded within the Unix Executable Files. That translated to poems with missing endings, or, if I was lucky, with multiple endings. And lots of random text to mark carriage returns, dashes, and notes on every printer I've ever used with that file.

Not the end of the world if I had a polished hard copy of everything I ever wrote, which I didn't. That meant hitting the Luddite journals to find the poem endings. Or rather, beginnings. Either that or maybe I should resurrect one of my Really Old Macs and move the files. Ah, therein lies the rub. Moving the files off the old Macs bearing SCSI drives, no wifi, no ethernet, no USB....then there's the bridge, or lack thereof. No way to translate them. Another case of FYEO. (For your eyes only.)

I now know that Unix Executable Files does not mean that  the files are executable, or operable, but have been duly executed in situ. WTF is the .bp file suffix ending? I know .txt, .doc,. jpg, .bin, .pict (which is unopenable). But .bp? No internet search joy. But I found Free File Viewer with a formidable list of files. But it only does Windows.

Needless to say, I am now rescuing old poetry and art lessons as well. Most of the art lessons are now posted—along with art, in December of the year it was created. Unless it was a Valentine, then it's either Jan. or Feb., depending on my whim.

Also needless to say, I'm back to using Snow Leopard. Such a lovely, elegant beast with its clouded spots. It just works. Always. Doesn't intrude, or say Lookit me! I'm so cool with all my fancy bells and whistles.

An OS should not behave like a circus clown. Or lock the front door on you. I'm glad to see the back end of Mavericks. But the Sierras have their own Dante-esque hell waiting for me to unravel. Meanwhile, Tax Day looms. I have 40 days and 40 nights left. They'll be the death of me yet, and it's not even the cruelest month.

I grow old, I grow old.... Where is J. Alfred when you need him? But I think The Great Antlered One, AKA the opinionated free-thinking beast, the Macalope, would totally get this one. A tip o' the antlers to you, Andy.

Let me out of this technological oubliette before I start channeling Conrad: The horror! The horror!


More MacMadness:
Swapping MacBook screens
MacBookPro journals
Hotroddin' my MacBookies
Mac Hell and the realm of Lost Permissions 
Macury Retrograde
Mac Trackpad woes
Dead iMackii 
On iClouds & Motherships
Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy
Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience
MacExpo