First, find a backpack...

The first episode of Dora the Explorer that I ever saw (out of an admittedly tiny set) involved Dora and Boots finding a magic stick. The stick, it seemed, would perform a trick, but first they had to take it across a snake filled river, over a wall, and to the top of the highest mountain. I know how they felt, staring at the river.

We have a computer. Well, we have several, but this is about one in particular. It's a Mac Mini that's 6 years old. The IRS and I don't agree on much, but we do both agree that after a computer is 3 years old, you ought to be thinking about replacing it. It's running OS-X 10.5 The current version of OS-X is 10.9 or maybe 10.10. Each plus-one increase in that .n would cost around $30-40, along with the attendent grief of doing a software upgrade. The problem is twofold: first of all, it runs slowly. Secondly, we can't install anything new because no modern software developer would ever consider actually being backwards compatible that far. So, this is getting to the point (or past it) where the pain of getting a new system becomes less than the pain of not doing it.

You can tell how long an IT professional has been in the field by how badly they shudder when they hear the word "legacy." Legacy is actually a code word which means "the old crap you have that won't play nice with what you want to get but which works just well enough that you don't want to scrap it all and replace it just yet." In addition to the poor old computer, we also have a variety of legacy peripherals:

• A printer we got from one relative that's older than the computer.
• A scanner we got from a different relative that doesn't work with the computer, but which does work with another computer which has its own set of problems and we also need to get rid of.
• A VGA monitor. You know, the old kind with the 15 pin connector. We used to have two, and I was pulling my hair out (what's left of it) trying to figure out how to use a "perfectly good monitor" with new computers that only have HDMI and that are cheaper than the monitor. One died, so now we only have one that won't work with anything new we get.
• Assorted pictures, music, recipes, and miscellaneous files loaded on the Mac, on a USB hard drive that's plugged into the Mac, and in various little pockets of cloud.

So, we are here, about to find a magic stick that will do a trick. But first we have to cross the snake filled river, climb the wall, and walk to the highest mountain. Should be a no brainer. Stay tuned for updates.