upgrade

I guess this should have been obvious to me long ago, but if you have shell access you can near-instantly upgrade drupal like this:

wget (new drupal release)
tar xfz (new drupal release)
cd drupal-(new drupal version)
rm -rf sites
rsync .htaccess * (your drupal root)

If you need it spelled out a little more closely, here's what the commands look like for me for 7.18, which seems to be a security update...

As a veteran owner of used vehicles, I am more than a little used to encountering automotive problems. When my Ford's charging system idiot light began to flash at low RPMs, I knew I had a serious problem coming my way. When it picked up to doing it on a regular basis, I realized that the problem had arrived, and unless I wanted to be buying a pair of deep-cycle batteries, I should find a solution, probably in the form of an alternator replacement. After doing a little research, I decided to install a later-model Ford alternator.

I had bent my right front stock steel wheel on my 1993 Impreza, so I decided to get some new wheels. Buying one wheel is kind of silly when they are (or should be) cheap, and fourteen inch wheels suck anyway so I was planning to get some 15" steel wheels from a Forester. These look kind of like alloys, and they're bigger than the stock wheel so you can run a lower sidewall. So I call up my local Subaru recycler, Subaru & Suzuki Auto Recycling (they do Kia too) and asked them what it could cost to get four Forester steel wheels.