Well it seems as though my mini-Saga of The Absurd served three
purposes

1. I now can see the warped humor (humour - for the Brits)
in this insane situation
2. Got a few folks feeling much better, or at least not as bad,
about their ordeal
3. learned about Open Source options which I will look into.

I'm on a Mac and because ALL the new Macs are Duo Core CPUs
and OS 10.5 aka Leopard is now UNIX behind the Apple GUI,
earlier Mac applications CANNOT run on the new machine and
latest OS. Apple earlier had a "Classic Mode" which allowed
new machines and OS to emulate the "classic" systems. Alas,
they've decided to go with a Clean Break - No Looking Back
approach. I'm hoping that at some point someone will come
out with an "old system" emulator that'll let me continue to
cling to applications I know like the back of my hand and can
get it to do things I'm sure the original developer hadn't even
thought of.

Oh - the basic easy to use CAD application is SuperPaint 3.0.

As for downloading software - I DO NOT provide my debit card
number over the internet - period. So far I haven't found a
way to pay for the software over the phone - to a known
phone number I can verify via a net search - and get a code
to "unlock" downloaded software.

Anyway - thanks for the suggestions and commiseration.
NOW I'm calm enough to go play with wood.

charlie b