THE DAY THE COMPUER STOOD STILL, PART II

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LAST WEEK, DALE, THE SUPER SOUTHERN COMPUTER WHIZKID FROM TECH SUPPORT WAS PREPARING TO RESET EVERYTHING ON MIKE’S COMPUTER, CLEARING OUT HIS ENTIRE HARD DRIVE, UP TO AND INCLUDING HIS COLLECTION OF RISQUE QUEEN ELIZABETH PICTURES. WILL DALE BE SUCCESSFUL? WILL MIKE’S COMPUTER BE FIXED? WILL THE QUEEN FIND OUT MIKE DID NOT DESTORY THE NEGATIVES?

I began to follow Dale’s instructions as he walked me through a series of steps designed to remove everything from my computer, transforming it in minutes from a highly technical home office into the world’s most expensive paper weight.

Dale told me that we would then be able to reinstall Windows and "lickety-split, you’ll be zipping and zooming again, buddy!" Dale let me off the line, convinced that my computer woes were through.

Poor, simple, no-indoor-plumbing-having Dale.

In no time flat, I had brand spanking new errors, with exciting new unintelligible words, with increasing doom in their tones!

In retrospect, I probably should have just given up on computers and headed out to the wilderness to live out my days at one with the land, with wild berries for dinner, leaves for blankets, and bears for my probable demise. But no, I, always the glutton for punishment, called tech support again.

This time, the call was answered by a brand new member to the multi-cultural stew we call America. Now, before you get on to me for being xenophobic (meaning "afraid of Xena: Warrior Princess" or "drinking pal of John Rocker"), please understand that I am not making disparaging remarks about immigrants. However, I am not sure how savvy of a business move it is to have someone fielding calls when his English is more broken than a one-handed clock. I will give you an example of one of the exchanges we had:

TECH SUPPORT GUY: Please for to now type to dee apron.

ME: The apron?

TECH SUPPORT GUY: Yesh. Dee apron.

ME: The apron?

TECH SUPPORT GUY: What part do you not to udderstand? Yesh, dee apron. The firz ledder of dee alpherbet, follow by dee two dots on each udder’s tops.

ME: You don’t by any chance mean "A prompt," do you?

TECH SUPPORT: Dat is what I say! Apron!

Many excruciating minutes later, I ended the call, telling the tech support guy that I appreciated his help but, truth be told, my cat spoke better English and probably knew more about computers.

It now seemed hopeless. I sat there, staring at my non-functioning computer, when it hit me – I have a friend who’s a computer programmer! This guy fools around with computers that run entire companies! He can fix my computer in no time!

I called my buddy and told him what was going on, expecting him to say something like, "Well, hold down escape, press the 4 key three times, press the page down key using your left pinky, and then chant, ‘Ungula booliyooo lapadu schwaa’ six times, and it will magically work."

Instead of getting some cool sorcerer effects, however, he opted to come over and look at it. He kicked around on my computer for about an hour, going to all kinds of places I never knew existed. He ran all kinds of tests on my computer (it failed English Lit, but did quite well in calculus and US History). Finally, he turned to me and said, "Well, the problem is not with any of the software. Your memory card is fried. You just need to get a new one and everything should be fine."

That was it. I called the company and told them what had been found, and the guy said, "Well, we’ll send you a new card, at which point you can reload Windows and you should be good to go." Simple as that.

In a few days, I received the replacement part, and voila – my computer worked. Granted, it took the better part of a week to get all of the stuff loaded back the way it was, thanks to Dale’s Slash and Burn Computer Repair. But, the bottom line is, my computer is all back together, and everything seems to be working fine again. I’m glad I’ve finally got this problem behind me, as I have much bigger things to worry about. For one thing, I’ve got a lot of explaining to do to the Queen.