Day Thirty-one: late evening of September 1st 2009

Well I needed to install Adobe Creative Suite 4 today, and I was in for a surprise. Normally, Adobe products are pretty stable. I’ve never felt like I’m being used as a beta tester. But this time I was installing an application after updating my operating system (Snow Leopard), and that might cause problems. What’s that old proverb, “Forewarned is forearmed.” At least I wasn’t surprised when something went wrong.

The package that I was installing was CS 4 Design Premium, which has just about everything you need to do graphic design (video applications are not included in this suite). The spec that struck me for this suite was the speed recommended for the processor - 2 gigahertz. I guess that I haven’t been paying that much attention to the technology related to the field that I used be involved in. Here is where an 'ancient one' might say, “Why I can remember back when...” Well, I’ll skip that for now.

There are four DVDs in the case, two for installation, one with content (fonts, images, samples), and a tutorial DVD for the various Adobe products. I realize that this is going to take some time to install, so I begin early, about nine o’clock, and at about ten-thirty its finished (I had some other things to do so I wasn’t there all the time). Now I begin the update of the applications. CS 4 has been around awhile, so patches for a variety of issues have been created and need to be applied, so, I started that process. Most applications, today, have a ‘Check for update’ command embedded in the Help menu. So I click on it, and the process begins, and continues to its completion, smoothly I might add. Hurray, I’m done. Now, I’ll activate each application to watch it load and then close it.

I begin this check. It isn’t a required thing, but if others are using the computer, you want to cut down on the frustration for the other person. Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat, Flash, all load and close properly. I open Fireworks, a web design special effects application, and close it. I open Dreamworks, a web design application, and as it opens an error message flashes on the screen telling me that Fireworks unexpectedly quit-huh! I had closed it, so what was this. I quit Dreamworks, and reopen Fireworks. Then I close it. And wait a bit before I move on. The message pops up again, this time there is an error report to Apple for me to fill out. Okay, new operating system, I’ll help out. I describe what happened, and send it off. I decide to check out the environment to see if there is anything that I missed. I slide my cursor over the screen and the pop out tray that contains shortcuts opens and I see all the Adobe applications that I had though I closed were active(???). How did that happen? Well I close them and open Fireworks again, maybe there was a memory conflict. Same results, ‘unexpected quit’, and another error report form.

Now I’m thinking that the application had been corrupted, and that means one thing - reinstall the application. But first, if this option is available, uninstall the program (sometimes it's another application, sometimes it’s a system process, as in Windows, whatever method removes the program and its associated files). That done, now I restart the computer, and begin reinstalling the application using the customized option offered on the installation disk. It seems like a lot of files are being installed, but what do I know. I notice that the process is almost complete (completion bars) and I get ready to check out Fireworks again. The message box appears on the screen announcing, Installation complete…with some errors. Then it states that it would be best to reinstall the whole suite again. Whaaat!? I don’t believe this. I’m on the verge of saying, well I’m not going to say IT. Okay I’m not going to let this process defeat me. It should work, I’ll make it work, or else (I have no real ‘or else’ scenario in my head). I begin again. I think that it is 3 o’clock now, and I’m glad I’m retired.

Did it work? I don’t know. I stopped after I installed the original suite and checked everything out. That was okay, but I didn’t apply the update/patches. I’ll do that tomorrow, after the dentist visit. I always wonder, after events like this, when the ease of use that is one of the inherent promise of technology will come about. So far it is a statement without any guarantees.