Monday, February 13, 2006

Gracious, Somebody Should Rescue Me

I don’t know how others out in cyber space do this blog thing every day. Don’t they have a life? Well, I am rushing to keep you up to date on what is going on with me. The last two weeks have been busy for this old girl.

It started with my internet provider’s program. I got up last Tuesday and turned on my computer, clicked the icon for the internet and got two messages. The first one read something about my e-mail folder had a technical problem and it was restored in a new folder. I clicked the “ok” button and got another message that said something about going on. Again, I clicked the ok button and the program shut down.

That is when I began the trek through everything on my computer to troubleshoot the error. No luck. Thank God. I have a laptop. Well, on my laptop I went to the web site and looked for numbers to get to call the provider and get help on fixing the error. No luck. Not a number anywhere to call. There were a lot of FAQ sections that were designed to assist me with problems that I might incur. Again, no help. So I sent an e-mail to the technical support group.

Now, are you ready? I wrote the e-mail describing my problem and clicked the submit button and got a message that said it did not go through and go back to start. WHAT! I almost cried. After spending more than three hours on my computer’s problem and searching for help, nothing I did on the web wanted to work either. Instead of crying, I cussed and fussed as I thought of the names I would call anyone I got in touch with.

I took a break because right about that time my mother called me. She was being rushed to the hospital again. Last year in September, you remember I told you about a death in my family and my mother’s serious medical condition all occurring in one week. Well, once more she was in dire straits. It was more important for me to deal with that than my computer.

My mother and I spoke about who was going to do what and when between me and my sister Judy. Judy would take her to the hospital and I would relieve her if time went on in getting her admitted. Judy would keep me up to date on the progress. So I went back to my laptop and checked my e-mail. Wow! It did go through. The e-mail I sent to technical support sent me a three-pages of instruction on how to remedy the situation. I followed all the steps and voila, it worked. According to them, an e-mail I had received, although it did not contain any virus, had caused a technical glitch somewhere and I needed to do a special backup thing on my computer then, let the backup program download the whole program again.

I think the e-mail that caused the glitch is the one I got from a company that supplied free use to do your taxes under some government agreement. You see, the last thing I had done the night before were my taxes through the federal government web sight. I completed them, submitted them, and got a return e-mail saying when my tax refunds should be deposited into my account. It came with more messages in it and in a format that was simply promotional advertizing.

It’s a good thing I believe in never putting all your eggs in one basket. If I had, with no laptop I would have had to seek some other way to get it all together again. So, to all you laptop lovers, better go retrieve that desktop you put in storage because you never know when you too may need more than one piece of equipment to do your work.

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