Histrionics and HissyFits over, I'm now rebuilding the mac .. The next 2 days are bandhs (again) , so it sort of works ..
After applying the latest update on Saturday, the machine just started crawling and locking up. It was playing up on reboot and would only come up every other time until it just didnt come up at all. The b-tree ( sort of the index to all the directories and files) got totally screwed and the only solution is to erase the hard drive and start again.
Luckily I didn't fit in those extra clothes and brought all my CD's and manuals with me, painful as they are to cart around I would be lost without them AND Thank God for the iPod. I did manage to remember to do a backup about a week or so ago to the iPod, so once I get all my apps downloaded (did I know something when I got an unlimited d/l account?) and back on, the loss is going to be fairly minimal. Unfortunately I didnt bother backing up the Virtual PC as it was so big, soooooo rebuilding the Windows machine is going to be the biggest pain. The mac was back up and running within an hour and you can guarantee the latest updates are NOT going on. Another bonus is IMAP, I havent lost any of my mail as it is all on the westnet server and with the synching between my phone and the iPod, again I havent lost any of my addresses or calendar. Bit of a bugger I can't swing the trip to India yet, but thats life ...
No doubt I will have plenty of time to ramble over the next 2 days, consider yourself warned :-) To all those who have sent emails, comments or chatted to me over the last couple of days, your support is a never ending source of comfort and it truly lifts my spirits and touches my heart. I'm sure that my bad days make some people uncomfortable, but if this is to be an account of my 'adventures' it has to be warts and all. We all have our bad days and when you are so far out of your element and your network of friends and family is so far away, you just have to go with it and then pick yourself up, brush off the dust and get on with it.