What would have normally been a typical update turned into a hectic chain of updates, upgrades, delays, and frustration. It’s an old tune I’ve sung many times, but with new lyrics.

It all began with my over-taxed router. At over 8 years old, it was really crushing under the strain of all the various gizmos, phones, tablets, wireless and wired PCs, etc. So I decided to replace it with Apple’s new Airport Extreme 802.11ac, a squat little thing that would resolve a number of issues.

Monday, 9:00 AM. The Airport Extreme arrives. I must confess, Apple does a sweet job with their packaging. It’s a thrill to unbox their hardware.

9:06. I disconnect the old router and connect the new Airport Express.

9:15. Hmmm. I can’t program the new router because Apple’s AirPort Express utility is out of date. An update must be downloaded from Apple’s web site. But wait! I don’t have Internet access because I disconnected the old router.

9:18. I re-connect the old router.

9:22. The new AirPort Express utility won’t install on my Mac because OS X is too old. I have Snow Leopard. The upgrade wants something newer, which ticks me off because I don’t upgrade operating systems. Snow Leopard is what I consider to be the last decent OS X version. I do not want Mountain Lion.

9:35. With heaving reluctance, I visit the App Store. It’s been so long that I must verify my Apple ID.

9:50. After re-verifying a dozen times, I finally check my inbox. There’s the confirmation message! I open it and click the link to prove to Apple that I am, in fact, Dan Gookin. That’s me. Yessir.

9:30. OS X 10.8.4 is downloading.

11:30. OS X is fully installed. Now I have to update a bunch of other software. The system is running molasses slow. The Mail program is re-indexing my massive archive of email. Some startup programs beg to download new versions.

12:15. Two restarts later, OS X 10.8.4 looks like it’s finally up. I’ll later blog about what I hate, but I finally install the Airport Express utility upgrade. More downloading. More waiting.

12:20. The new router is up and running, but the Internet isn’t. I have to restart the entire network.

12:25. The Internet is up, but the wired computers can’t access it. Thus begins some massive tweaking of IP addresses, port forwarding, and other immortal nonsense.

12:40. The Wambooli PorchCam is offline. More network tuning and tweaking.

12:56. I think everything on my Mac is working fine. But:

Tuesday. Parallels, the Windows emulator for the Mac, doesn’t work. I need to re-install it. Fortunately, that process goes smoothly and I get all my stuff back.

Thursday. I can’t run gcc on the command line. My version of Xcode is quite old, so I download the new version. gcc still doesn’t work. I install the command line tools from Xcode. gcc still doesn’t work. While plowing through the various folders, I see that the older version of Xcode didn’t uninstall. So I just – against my own advice – delete the /Developer folder. All of it. That did the trick, gcc now works.

Did I mention how much I dislike upgrading operating systems?