Plain Advice

Yesterday in my office… I’m a social worker by day… I was buried in paperwork and plugging along on my computer. I tried to get on the internet but as soon as I typed anything into the browser, I got that dreaded error message “Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience”. I tried a few more times, and the same thing happened. Yeah, yeah. Enough with the apologies.

So I picked up the phone and dialed tech support.

We have really great computer whizzes in our office. I have never been down to the basement where they are stationed, but I always imagine that it is a concrete room with lots of wires and computer equipment everywhere (see picture below).

The tech who answered my call listened as I told him the problem. He asked if my computer was on, and I said yes. Within a split second, something took possession of my screen. It was a little freakish and then I realized it was only him, accessing my computer remotely.

I was intrigued as I watched computer guy go through and try to find the problem on my device. He would open and close windows faster than you can say “laptop“. He would click on things and speak as he went, as if I could understand a single thing he was talking about. He would point to a string of letters, punctuation and numbers and say “see how nonsensical this file is? It looks suspicious to me”. I would verbally agree with him, but on the inside I was thinking that it looked about as suspicious as the UPC barcode on a bag of chips.

After watching computer guy delete, update, install, uninstall and reinstall things for about 45 minutes, I finally said “how do you figure out what is wrong?” (he still hadn’t identified what was going on).

He explained “when you look for a computer problem, you have to first determine whether it is equipment/hard drive related, or if the malady is more of an issue in the registry and/or files”.

Now it was clear as mud. What is a registry? The only thing that comes to mind is the one stop shopping sensation, Super Target, where I have gone many times to buy gifts from bridal and baby registries. Somehow, I didn’t think that was what he meant.

I must have been giving off a confused aura, because he decided to make an analogy that he thought I, as a social worker, could relate to. He said the hard drive/equipment would be like identifying a physical problem in a person, where a registry/file problem would be more like an emotional problem.

When he said this, I wanted to burst out in laughter. Was he telling me that my computer may have an emotional problem? Yeah, that is just what I need. A computer that needs therapy. Somehow, when I log onto my computer each day, I enjoy that it is not a person and not in crisis. I thought I was safe from these things in computerland.

But he was serious, and he continued to talk about this analogy for a long time.

Finally, after about 2 hours (yes, 2 hours…) computer guy said “done”. He had me try the internet and it was working like a charm. He apologized for taking so long, but I was just so happy that my computer had regained it’s sanity. 2 hours is not a long time compared to the years it takes some people to work out their issues in therapy.

My advice? None for now. I just wanted to share this heartwarming story.

If you are computer savvy, please excuse my complete ignorance if I used the wrong words or terms in this article. I am just going off what I remember from computer guy.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.