@etresoft
You are hitting the nail on the head. I have to admit the way I keep my computer is filthy, and beneath contempt. The way I have been moaning IS arrogant and self centredly blinkered. Someone with your knowledge can, I am sure, look into my console and see a whole bunch of things about my character and the way I conduct my life and feel justified in giving the me telling off I deserve and actually need. I am sure you could have gone a lot further so thanks for your restraint.
You are also right that probably until the end of time anyone else - if they find this thread - will be able to find out the same unpalatable truths about me. It is a good job you (and they) can't also see the outside of my computer - covered in bits of food, dried alcohol, and other stuff impossible to identify..... Thank god....the shame.
You are right - apart from whatever, if any, problems are caused by the NVIDIA drivers - this is all my fault.
I am probably not fit to own a mac with an OS as advanced as Lion in the same way that some people shouldn't own big dogs. It is always the owner and not the dog.
Yet I still - despite accepting all that - blame Apple.
Apple led me on.
First of all I am a creative (I am a musician - well a drummer) and I use a computer for composing and recording mixing and stuff. But I also do, encouraged by Apple all these years - a whole bunch of other things at which I am not at all qualified or trained - web design, graphic design,video editing, flash animation, upgrading my system etc I do all these things in a way that would not bear scrutiny to an expert or someone who teaches college courses in any of these areas, yet I produce what I need to do what I do and make a living. Apple encouraged me to feel I can do all that and also to feel that the Mac was the computer for me to do it on. My focus is on the stuff not the system and I am impatient, unrealistic, and prone to fantastical thinking.
Apple led me on, brazenly seduced me to believe it was the computer for me, a dog anyone can own, especially if they are prone to staying up all night in a pile of empty Red Bull cans, overflowing ashtrays, and discarded KFC buckets during some desperate lunge for a deadline, under time pressure probably entirely of their own making.
Furthermore Apple has supplied a whole series of OS upgrades I could download and run from Software Update, and also the Migration Assistant, and Restore from Backup functionality that has allowed me to carry on living on borrowed technological time, buying into the 'sub-prime' 'junk bond' style delusion that upgrading my OS and moving to a new mac was a one click process anyone can do that was really unlikely to go really wrong. Yes they printed warnings in small print but surely if it was really that dangerous they wouldn't make it so easy to do?
And so I have carried with me the ever increasingly thick and toxic techno sludge as I moved from mac to mac, library to library, as I wantonly installed random and ridiculous 3rd party pieces of software, and never, ever, ever tidied up.
Yet as you say miraculously, and despite the ever increasing dark circles under my and my mac's eyes, and the occassional weird jerking movements, my macs have up until now generally carried on working and so have I and that experience over many years has also lulled me into a false sense of security.
I should say in my defence that I was quite competent on OS7-9 at clearing out troublesome extensions, control panels and preferences, and even on occasion sorting out other people's macs for them. However when OSX arrived it just got so much more complicated in there.
It is now so complicated, that in Lion, Apple wisely hid the Library so that people like me couldn't just go rummaging in there while smoking, drinking a beer, and dropping crumbs.
So yes it is my fault my mac is 'hosed' - or to continue the analogy my dog is biting people and urinating on the carpet - but I would also argue alot of other people are seemingly having similar problems with Lion to me - possibly for similar reasons, and that there are a lot of people who use and abuse their macs in similar (and also probably different) ways to me.
You advice about going back to bare metal etc is fantastic and I will follow it but maybe Apple should have been more forceful in telling me to do that given the leap to the 64 bit kernel thingy.
I finally want to argue the case that this community is just as much for people like me to check out how each other is getting on and making decisions on how to dodge the techno bullets we barely understand and moan, share, and rant and stuff as it is for us to deferentially get help from people with pristine and unsullied Preference folders, unblemished 'back up and clean install' upgrade records going back to 1983, tightly clipped moustaches, nylon trousers, and a deep familiarity of the inner fractal layers of the Console's Inner Wang.
NB I apologise for, and unreservedly withdraw, the moustache and nylon trousers comment - as usual I am getting carried away and making unfounded assumptions.
Anyway I needed to get that off my chest and I thank you for your input and wish you all a great Xmas - including you etresoft.
cheers
Tommy B.
PS Etresoft I just realised that you have 15,840 points and I have...er...cough.......15. Please somebody find this post helpful......
