finally back to square one

Since I got my laptop repaired, I've taken my sweet time reinstalling software. Some of that slowness is attributable to laziness; some of it is attributable to unforeseen obstacles. Here's a good example of the latter: I had wanted to reinstall Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 on my computer, but Amazon wouldn't let me re-download. I had bought a fresh new CD-ROM copy of Elements 2020 for my Windows machine at work; the package came with two discs, one for Windows and one for Mac. I tried installing the Mac version on my laptop, but my laptop informed me that I needed to update my OS beyond Yosemite. Apparently, the best OS for a 2011-era MacBook Air is not the most current OS—which is Catalina—but an OS called High Sierra. So I spent a big chunk of today downloading that OS. I had to download it twice, but I'm not too worried about how much space the double-download takes because I have almost four times the storage space on my laptop than what I'd originally purchased (in 2011, the laptop came with 64 GB of storage; it now has about 240 GB). Once I figure out how to get rid of the first, abortive download, I'll do so. Anyway, I did the OS switchover so that I could install Photoshop Elements 2020, and it worked. But it took a lot of time.

At this point, I've installed everything I've wanted to install. MS Office was easily re-downloadable (Microsoft is apparently less persnickety than Adobe about re-downloading purchased software). Photoshop Elements 2020 is in place. I had to re-purchase Adobe Acrobat 2017 for Mac, God help me, but that's now in place as well. Mac OS High Sierra is installed and purring along. An updated version of Chrome was one of the first things I installed when I got my laptop back and updated my OS from Mountain Lion to Yosemite. iTunes got updated as well, which is why I'm only three episodes away from finishing "Burn Notice." I haven't reinstalled Norton Security or Clean My Mac; I'll reinstall those once I start having storage-capacity problems again; that shouldn't be for another several years, assuming this poor laptop can stand the testicles of time.

Now that I'm finally back to square one, I can restart my book project, which got destroyed when my laptop's brain died. A friend of mine advised me not to create a single gigantic tome of movie reviews, but to divide my work into smaller volumes. I might take his advice; that would certainly shorten the amount of time from now until the actual printing of my self-published work. Whatever I decide to do, it's good to be back in the saddle.