Sam got sidetracked with his plans to write an app for iPhone that restores some contact-sorting features he used to have on his Nokia.

Sam works on an old Dell a dear friend gave us, so any app work is going to happen on my Mac. He started amassing the resources he needed and then came to me to say the final step was this: we need to upgrade to Lion OS.

I consented to this upgrade without asking probing questions — completely, utterly stupid on my part.

Ever since I got my first Mac in 1988 and we made the leap to System 7, I’ve known it’s never simple. System upgrades are like taking off down the autobahn without tying down a bunch of your stuff in the back of the pick-up.

(My mind is in funny loop just now, imagining pick-up trucks on the autobahn racing past Benzes and Beemers.)

What flew out of the Wolfe family pick-up, you ask?

All my financial records (yes, Intuit let the weenies rule over Quicken). Sam’s amazing fixes for our family computer network — including a peripheral switch for our printer and our portable back-up drive. The entire Microsoft Office suite.

I sooooo knew better.

Major backtracking today.

But I’m proud of Sam. He downloaded Open Office. That’s fixed. And knowing Sam, we’ll be true contributors to the community.

Then, we pulled the Quicken data off portable back-up and he’s going to use Paige’s laptop to help me convert to iBank. That should be fixed tomorrow.

Right now, he’s writing the manufacturers of that peripheral equipment and asking for patches.

See Sam Go.