Wednesday, June 17, 2009

a blog about nothing

maybe it's just me, but seems like if you start a blog you're obligated to make periodic posts to it. think it's covered in the terms and conditions fine print. like all that stuff no one reads when they install new software. or it may be written in the eighteenth edition of amy vanderbilt's book of modern etiquette. start a blog, best be prepared to write frequent and informative or creative posts. otherwise, you don't deserve to have your very own blog in the first place.

and that puts you under more than just a little bit of pressure. pressure to perform. and it can get worse. you can feel pressure to perform up to a certain standard. that's where it really gets tough.

i have some inane curiosity about people from my past. for no particular reason i wanna know what and how my old friends, old classmates, old co-workers are doing. i'm a real sucker for social sites like classmates dot com and facebook. and probably there are more like them, but i haven't stumbled into them as yet.

but just the other day i had a note from an old high school classmate. well, not old in the sense of age, old in the sense of "long time ago". and she said that she remembered me and she'd read somewhere that i was very funny. ok. i'm flattered. at times i try to be funny. but responding to her message (which is a distinct requirement in both the terms and conditions and amy's book) i found myself trying to be humorous and failed miserably. too much pressure. i just couldn't come up with anything witty to write. so i wrote something rather foolish and didn't even think to ask her where she'd heard, or read, that i was funny. funny, she said she didn't remember me as being funny. and now since i wrote back a really lame message, she's sure i'm not.

so this is all coursing through my mind at the same time as i'm feeling like i need to post something on this blog, when it occurs to me that i could write a blog about nothing. after all, seinfeld did a tv show about nothing and it was a hit for nine years or so. and i still watch it two or three times a day.

people have bad days. fortunately, mostly when a person has a bad day he, or she, has the rest of his, or her, network of friends or family to help him, or her, get over it. not always.

i've had a bad day. i'm semi computer literate. hon - not so much. at least that's the way she feels. and as her laptop wouldn't print to our family printing machine, she asked me to fix it. and of course i'm up for the challenge. i'm a man. men fix things.

i actually started last nite. i dinked with this option, tweaked that one. ultimately removed and re-installed the printer driver. that's gotta work. or not. and last nite it was "not".

so i started anew this morning. refreshed. slurping some really good coffee. and i uninstalled and installed some more. then i realized i was in deeper than the depth of my computer literacy. so then i did what any red-blooded american man would do in a similar situation . . . i called india. for technical support. and the people who you talk to in tech support are really nice and they want to be so helpful and they just can't thank you enough for selecting their product in the first place. and they're very careful to spell each word with letter and, what's the term, what the army uses to clarify a letter. a, apple, b, boy, c, charlie, etc. but have you ever had a tech support say y, yankee? that's hard to grasp. and j as in jury doesn't ring real true either.

but they are helpful. and they started out by having me do all the things i did last nite. and then we uninstall and re-install. hmmm, think i've seen this somewhere before. and after that we power down, re-boot, run some other routine, test, still no work, uninstall, re-install, re-boot, run some other routine, then, well, you get the drift. i think it was mark twain, or maybe winston churchill, who said idiocy is doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different result. well, that's pretty much how i felt.

after two hours i bid farewell to kodak tech support. or more honestly, they said goodbye to me. they were done with me. your problem is either the computer or microsoft.

i'll try to shorten this somewhat: i called microsoft, they said call gateway, gateway tech support said we could fix it, but back up files first because we have to re-format the hard drive, or something to that effect. i told em i didn't have the equipment to do that. they said hire a third party. i said i thought that's why i bought this extended warranty, so i wouldn't have any support expense. they said . . . . well, they win. but he did give me a secret phone number to microsoft where they'd offer free support. so i called them. and the fella from india must have been sadly mis-informed. microsoft denied that they would help me without charge, and they may or may not be able to correct the problem without re-formatting. so i can pay them to not fix the problem, or pay them to fix the problem and lose the files, or pay the third party then pay them, or, crap, too many options, none of which i like.

so about six hours into this project i give up. we'll worry about it after we have a nice trip to branson over the weekend. meanwhile, i've had a bad day, i'm looking for sympathy.

and scooter comes over. and he's had a bad day, too. and he's looking for sympathy, too. he's no help in me getting over my bad day. and i'm no help to him getting over his bad day. and hon's been around me all day while i'm trying to deal with tech suppport, so i know her day's been really trying. the dogs run and hide when i walk into the room they're in. and at one point i called jim-bob to see if he could help with the computer issue, cause, after all, he is a systems engineer and i.t. expert and all that. but he's had a bad day, too, so he's no help. well, he was reassuring, and that was nice. but it was really no help.

so we've all had a bad day. and we're all gonna go to bed and hope to sleep well and wake up with a new and refreshed outlook tomorrow. and this may be the wordiest blog post i've ever written. all about nothing.

3 comments:

  1. I'd do some pretty bullet points here but I can't be bothered to do the HTML tags.

    * I found that when I had a blog focused on a specific topic, it was much easier to sit and type posts on a daily basis. However, I also got burned out which is why I now blog about whatever catches my attention. Thing is, by the time I get around to writing the post, it's not worth it.

    * B is Bravo not Boy. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India....can you tell I spent the first 18 years of my life on military bases?

    * What is the deal with your printer/fax/scanner/coffeemaker/mp3...? Does your computer not see it? or does is show up and they just don't talk the same language or...???

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  2. if you're in the foreign correspondant position with tech support, it's apple, boy, charlie, dildo, epic, frig, ghana, hue, ingrid, jones, klan, lucid, mama, nana, opal, papa, queer, rats, saab, tutu, uvula, viceroy, whips, xylophone, yankee, zero.

    turns out there's a spooling issue in vista. on line i was able to confirm that it's a common occurance. the quick and easy fix touted on one website didn't work. oh, i even tried a different printer - same result. decided to shelve the issue til after the weekend when we return from branson.

    if you have a fix idea, well, fake an accent and call me.

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  3. Did you buy the computer w/ Vista or did you upgrade the OS?

    ReplyDelete