I was worked to a frazzle and had been 25 minutes late getting off because some jackass refused to believe that we wouldn't knock $200 off the price of something simply because he said it was on sale for that much earlier in the day. Not. Thank goodness the call dropped (I still don't know why; I tend to believe there is an angel in charge of call centers who makes calls just disappear when it's really necessary) and I finally got to come home. After my daughter came and picked me up because, of course, my car wasn't running (a whole 'nother story), I got home and sat down at my computer and booted her up and.....
"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
Huh? What the hell does that even mean???????? I cursed. The angel would not have been pleased.
I tried again.
"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
@*)$&#@$+)&!^$@##*"?>@#^%*><":":
At this point, I'm fairly certain the poor angel blushed a lovely shade of crimson and left me to my own devices.
So, I unplug the plugged in things, and I turn off the turned on things and I watch thirty seconds tick by interminably and then I replug the things with plugs and restart the things with buttons and....
"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
@*)$&#@$+)&!^$@##*"?>@#^%*><":":!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I'll just call Verizon. Their friendly, helpful automated system explains to me that many of my internet connectivity problems can be solved by going to their website.... Of course, the stupid robot doesn't know that "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
I get Louise on the line. Now, I'm sure she's a lovely human being. I bet she's smart. Clearly she is, because it's obvious to me that English is not her first language and yet she's speaking it, so she knows at least two languages, which makes her smarter than me, right? I'm also betting her name isn't really Louise, but that's a minor quibble; I'm reasonably certain that her name was something that my poor, uneducated American tongue couldn't properly pronounce anyway.
So, after about 45 minutes of unplugging the plugged in things and plugging them back in, and turning things on and off and counting off the ticking seconds and pinging and advanced pinging and verifying IP addresses and giving my name and address and phone numbers and my blood type and what I had for lunch and how many eggs I had left in my fridge - you get the idea - nothing happens.
And eventually, after a lot more questions and diligent script-reading (don't ever try to throw those off-shore techies off their scripts! It confuses them and they get that deer-in-the-headlights sound to their voices), Louise concludes that I am, in fact, online.
mm-hmm.
Clearly, Louise would know better than I do. After all, she speaks two languages.
"Louise," I say, as kindly as I can, "I am most assuredly not online. There is no flapping butterfly, no 'Good evening, Nancy', no e-mail. There is not even so much as a viagra pop-up to confirm your diagnosis."
In her infinite wisdom and based on what I'm sure is at least 25 minutes of thorough, in-depth training, and in a voice that indicates she has exhausted every bit of her vast technical knowledge and soaring intellect while helping me, Louise decides that the problem is with my browser software. I should call the computer's manufacturer.
What Louise doesn't realize is that my computer is about the same age as my car and my daughter. Okay, not quite. But I'm actually fairly certain that my daughter was pregnant with my-just-turned-eight-years-old grandson when the friend who gave it to me bought this computer. Still, I'll give Gateway a try.
The Gateway guy, Arnold, who also clearly speaks two languages, the first of which was not English, doesn't care that the computer is old, or a hand-me down. His big concern is that my computer has been "upgraded" and is therefore out of warranty. Seems that I should be happy to be running Windows 98. Even after ten years and two program upgrades (assuming you consider Vista to be an upgrade, which I know a lot of people don't, but that's a story for another day). Anyway, he couldn't help me, really, but he was kind enough to rattle off, in his heavily accented second language, a list of the 3865 simple steps to roll back from IE 7 to IE6. I got as far as "click on programs" and was lost.
Now, IE 7 is a bug-infested little gem, and is incompatible with just about every other browser or operating system in the known universe; I'm betting even Bill Gates himself can't get IE7 to run smoothly. Steve Jobs praises God every day for IE7 because it makes everything Apple and Mac seem darn near perfect. But, I digress.
Well, I decide that if Arnold is correct, maybe I should call Microsoft. So, I called Microsoft. And I got a wonderful woman, also a speaker of more than one language, and whose native tongue also was not the same as mine. Again, I'm sure she's a lovely, intelligent woman. And I'm betting Bill Gates gives his techies a lot more than 25 minutes of training. Probably upwards of 45. Maybe 50. No sense sparing the training when your company is the propogator of the biggest computer software and electronics developments in the modern world. Microsoft is to computers what McDonald's is to hamburgers, right? McInternet and all.
Now, here is where I began to get ... testy. Some might say belligerent. Unreasonable, even. See, (and if you haven't "upgraded" to IE7, you're going to want to pay attention here) Microsoft Internet Explorer v.7, meant to compete with Firefox (a wonderful and non-buggy browser that is so superior to IE7 that it's like comparing Abe Vigoda to Greg Vaughan , but again, not the point) is a free download, so Microsoft - who made the program, put it on their website, promoted it, encouraged its download and use, and who KNOWS the thing is buggier than a Tijuana taco stand - doesn't offer technical support for their product! Well, let me rephrase that. They don't offer FREE tech support for their product. If you download the program, and it messes up your computer, it's $59.99 an hour for their well-trained, articulate, empathetic, multi-lingual staff to help you. Undo the damage their product did. That they darn near begged you to download in the first place. Yeah, I wished whatshername a very $%&^@*^$#%" target="_top">#$%&^8743*^$#% day, and hung up.
I finally realized that there was something I could try. I have a registry cleaner that I pay $40 a year for, and it's totally worth every penny. It's a great product and includes a function that, when correcting any errors which develop in your Windows registry, creates a "restore point" in your computer. You can, basically, set your computer back to the way it was days or weeks or months ago and any damage done in the interim is essentially, and with some exceptions (viruses, hardware failure, grape soda...) erased! Yes, I know Windows has this function, too, but I've never used it, so I'll stick with what I know.
And now I'm back. Which is good considering that most of my friends, all of my bills, and the great majority of my interests, all live on my computer.
Oh, and Louise, Arnold,and Microsoft girl? I hope you have to call the place I work sometime. I'd looooooooooooove to help you the way you helped me. 'Preciate it.
