IT Department... Call on Line 1

Haley, Sib #2, was down to visit this weekend and I said something while she was here that has come back to bite me in my much smaller than it was 18 months ago hiney (NOTE: I had to Google how to spell “hiney” and spellcheck still doesn’t like it!) Mom said that she’d found a photograph (or two) that she would like to have scanned so she could enlarge them and hang them somewhere. I, not knowing how to use the scanner that is a part of the printer/copier/scanner that we have, suggested that before she left, Haley could help Mom with that because Haley is the “techie” daughter. (i.e., Rose is perfectly happy not knowing how to use the printer/copier/scanner thingee). Haley did help Mom figure it out and life went on.

So how did my harmless comment come back to bite me on the bum? Well, let me tell ya.

Monday night, after a long, but relatively successful day at the mines, I came home. Mom had dinner ready and while we are sitting at the table, she says she has a couple of things to discuss with me. I was game, so I said, “shoot!”

First, Mom had, the previous week, lost her driver’s license. She got on the BMV website to find out what she would need to get a new license and was pleased to find out that she qualified to renew (it was going to expire in December anyway) it online, but she wasn’t sure if she had an account already with the BMV (she did, I set it up in February when I renewed our plates), so she decided to wait for me to get home. Well, piece of cake. While we are sitting there eating, I get on her laptop, which is sitting on the table beside me, and quick like a bunny, log on and renew her license! I looked at her with a very satisfied look in my eyes and said, “Next?”

B) The virus protection software on Mom’s two computers, the desktop and the laptop, was getting ready to expire in five days. She had got online to see about renewing it and discovered (she thought) that she could get it renewed for all three of our computers (mine, too) for the price of $39.99! But before she did it, she wanted to make sure that she’d read the thing right. Again, quick like a bunny that really wanted to just spend the rest of her evening on the balcony killing zombies with a cat in her lap, I went to their site, confirmed that that was in fact the deal, and renewed the virus protection stuff. I got the renewal code and entered it and next thing I know, the laptop goes to the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! (cue lightning sound effect).

My first thought was to say, “Ok, that’s done! Now let’s go kill zombies!” I could feel my butt being nibbled on. But being the good girl that I am… sigh. So the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH (“BSD”) said that if this was the first time we got it, to reboot and see if the problem went away. I did. It didn’t. Next, the BSD said that if you got it after rebooting, to do something… I didn’t fully understand what, but I thought I’d log on in “safe mode” and uninstall the virusware… maybe that would work. So I got on in safe mode and started thinking that man, I really wished Haley was here. She is fearless where computers are concerned. My next thought was that I really hate talking on the telephone, but I’m going to have to call iYogi.

We have this service. I’m not sure how Mom came across them, but we’ve had it for about a year now, called iYogi and we have an 800 number that goes to India where there are all these techie computer people and they help us do whatever we need on our computers. We can’t print, call them and they log on and fix it for us over the internet. They will scan our computers and clean it up, speed it up, etc. Things I could probably do on my computer but generally don’t take the time and certainly don’t want to do on both of Mom’s computers.

So I called iYogi. Got this very nice guy – I didn’t catch his name and while I don’t want to be insulting, I can’t resist calling him Rajesh Koothrappali. Raj really earned his wages that evening/(morning (in India). We tried to set it up so Raj could log in to the computer over the internet, only to discover that I’d chosen the wrong safe mode. So I rebooted and chose the correct safe mode (with internet). Again we tried to set it up so Raj could log in to the computer over the internet, only to discover that the wireless wasn’t working on the laptop. Sigh. So I trucked the whole kit-n-kaboodle into my bedroom, hooked it directly up to the internet, avoiding the wireless router. AGAIN we tried to set it up so Raj could log in to the computer over the internet, only to discover that although the mouse was working, the keyboard was non-responsive. So I unplugged the keyboard to my desktop and hooked it onto the laptop, only to discovery that the keyboard was STILL non-responsive. I could mouse, but that wasn’t good enough as I had to type in the code to let him take over the computer.

At this point, Raj had to keep putting me on hold to figure out what to do next… and the hold times kept getting longer and longer. I imagined this phone bank of workers feverishly trying to resolve my issues! After over an hour and a half, poor Raj was forced to tell me that I was going to have to reinstall the operating system. We decided that I’d hang up, perform a backup, find the CD’s and then call back when I was ready to reinstall. We said a tender goodbye; he wished me “good karma;” and hung up. Sniff… I still miss him… 
I assigned Mom the task of finding the CD’s while I attempted to backup her genealogy info. I was distressed to be advised by the laptop, upon my attempts to perform said backup, that there had been a “catastrophic error” and that no backup could be performed. I informed Mom of this and we each said a quick prayer that she’d not done too much on it since the last time we did a back up. And she probably hasn’t, since we went on vacation and then she had her back problems and then the heart attack that wasn’t really a heart attack.. (I know, I’ve not told you about that, but this would be why there’s been no blogs for a while.)

We found the CD’s and decided that I didn’t have it in me to do anymore that evening. Plus, the series finale of The Closer was coming on at 8:00 pm and I didn’t want to miss it and my phone needed charging.  I want a cookie.