Update This

Update This!

By Wayne Maruna

I had some spare time and decided to do an image backup of my Windows XP machine. I hooked up the external drive and turned on the machine. I figured this would be a fairly quick and painless process. I should have known better. Is anything on a computer ever quick and easy?

I noticed that down in the ‘notification tray’ there was a familiar orange square. I hovered my mouse over it. A yellow balloon popped up to tell me that there was a Java update available. Of course I already knew that from the orange icon. This was update 29 to version 6. I’d seen it 28 times before. Sure, I chuckled to myself, might as well have everything ship-shape before doing the backup.

While that was installing, a message box pops up in the lower right corner of my screen to tell me that MalwareBytes has downloaded data base version 8029. Well, thanks for that. At least with the pay-for version I have installed, it does its own laundry.

Shortly after, I get a pop-up announcing that Apple has updated their iTunes and QuickTIme software and I really should install it. Might as well, I’m not making much progress yet on whatever it was I started out to do.

While I waited for the Apple updates to install, I figured I might as well check my email. I opened Microsoft Outlook. Hmm…no updates for Outlook. What’s the matter Microsoft, abandoning the program, are we? There’s my weekly e-letter from Windows Secrets, a technical bulletin. I scroll down to Susan Bradley’s column. She writes about updates and patches. She tells me to make sure my installation of Google Chrome is up to date. She says the version number should be 15.0.874.102. I check. Nope, mine’s only at 14 and change. I do the update. I end up with 15.0.874.106m. Gee whiz Susan, try and keep up, will ya?

I open up my Firefox browser to have a look at the weather to see if it might be snowing by the time I get the backup actually done. Firefox says it has downloaded an update which will install when I close the browser, and do I want to close the browser? Oh, I do so much want to close the browser. The update installs, and I’m presented with a message box that says my version of Roboform (password manager) is no longer compatible with the newly installed update of Firefox. So with head slowly shaking, it’s off to the Roboform website to download and install the latest version.

I check back down in the notification tray again and there’s my old friend, the little red Adobe Reader update icon. I know it well. It visits me as regularly as lower back pain and is about as welcome. Sure, why not; that’s a fifteen yard penalty for piling on, but go ahead and install. At least today it’s not your evil cousin, the Adobe Flash update, which is nearly a daily event. That piece of annoying software, for which sadly there is no alternative, is currently at version 11.0.1.152. Now before you tell me there could not possibly have been 152 patches to the first minor revision to the 11^th version of Adobe Flash, hold your tongue, because yes, there could have been. I’m pretty sure I’ve been an unwilling participant in each and every one of them. I’m all for equal opportunity employment, but Adobe’s management needs to understand that their coding department is no place for cross-eyed dyslexic programmers with tendencies to daydream.

OK, is that it? One last check of the notification tray - is everyone aboard? Finally? Thank God! I start up my backup software. Up pops a message box that tells me there is an update available for it and I should download and install it before doing any more backups.

That was the last straw. I had had all the updating I could stomach for one day. Forget about the backup. If the hard drive wants to die, fine with me. At that point I’d willingly serve as its Dr. Kevorkian if it wanted. I clicked on Start, Shut Down, and the screen indicated that Windows would indeed shut down just as soon as it had installed thirteen Microsoft updates. Grrrrr!

Fuming, I grabbed my smart phone and walked out onto the patio to try and calm down while calling ahead for some takeout from Golden China. I flicked the phone from stand-by to run and saw that I had an alert. I pulled it down. It said “Five updates found”.

Had it not been for the exorbitant cost of replacement, you’d have seen that thing on a trajectory from my patio, over Taberna’s 18^th tee, and into the pond.