what's the fucking point?

i am in a foul mood today. i am surrounded by incompetent people who make me want to kill them and then myself. not only do i have to represent at a workplace that treats me like i'm 5, i have electronic malfunctions at home, no thanks to apple. i hate my job, i hate my computer, i hate everything. oh, and christmas is coming up. yay. i get to take my laptop to apple and shove my way through tons of people who can afford to buy things they'll never need to go upstairs to the "repair" department. there are quotes around repair because it's a fallacy. they don't actually repair anything. if you have a problem it's either OE (operator error) or it's a fatal flaw in your hardware, which means that they have to send it back to china, er, california and send you a new one (or you have to buy a new one.) it's never anything that they can fix right there. and after spending $140 on a software upgrade (which i've never done before in my life, but i was desperate), i don't feel like giving apple any more of my money. here is the chain of events:
1. safari, word and excel won't start. the little icon bounces, bounces, bounces, maybe a window will pop up, like a teaser, then it'll just disappear. nothing. no error message, nothing. what the fuck? i didn't realize i needed to perform felatio on my laptop to get it to work.
2. i ignore said issues and use another browser. and i never really need to use word or excel. but now firefox won't let me hear ringtones for my new phone. one more inconvienence in my life. some recommends that i run my software updater to see if there's a more recent version of that will actually work. i do this.
3. updater freezes in the middle of optimizing my harddrive. i force quit. i restart. it runs through the start up routine, but can't initialize. thanks, apple.
4. i go out and dump a chunk of change on 10.4.6. i install it. it works like a charm. safari, word and excel work. hazzah!
5. i make a spread sheet of addresses for my xmas cards. i try to print it. my printer gets stuck in a termial loop of running blank sheets through. i try another program... same thing. to get it to stop, i have to pull the paper out of the feed tray. sigh.
6. i go to HP's website to see if there's a software conflict. i get this window that says something about updating my firmware (whatever the hell that is). so i go to download page (where it claims the updater should be, but it's not), i download some installer program. it does nothing. i look back on the HP driver website. it says at the bottom, "if the driver you are looking for isn't here, then it isn't available in your language." of course. on one page they say it's available, but on the page they direct you to go, it isn't there. typical. why don't they just have the fucking uploader on that damn page? because that makes sense.
7. i print again. same thing. i look on the software updater to see if they have anything there. i guess i haven't learned my lesson yet, but i see that there is already an upgrade to 10.4.8. ooooo! i a higher number! i want it! and maybe it'll fix my printer problem.
8. i download the thing overnight. i wake up the next morning to "an error has occured during updating. we're sorry for the inconvenience." i bet you are. i restart.
9. now my computer can't even get to the start up window. the apple sits there, taunting me, the little wheel of uselessness, spinning away.
10. i grab my install CD of tiger. i put it in. i run it. it says, "cannot upgrade, as there is already a higher version on here." of course. so i do a clean install.
11. "there was an error during installation. unable to intall."

how much time have i wasted trying to fix things that should never have broken? does it matter, since my time is worthless anyway. evidently apple knows this. now i'm going to have to stand in line to have some unwashed hippie tell me that he has to send my laptop to china so some 5-year-old can get paid 5 cents an hour to put in a new . he a) won't know how long it'll take, b) won't know how much it will cost, and c) can't be sure that will fix my problem. that's when i'll slam my laptop onto the floor so i can watch it burst into millions of tiny pieces. then i'll turn to smelly hippie and say, "earn your keep. clean that up."

i hate everything right now.