Electronic technology: love it and hate it...

[fajrdrako]

Or: why I missed posting to LJ for a whole day.

My friend Lionel had offered to put Linux on my old computer, so I could try it out. Sure, said I, because I was curious. So last night he brought back my old computer and plugged it in to see what happened.

A while back he'd done the same for another friend, Wayne, and I think when he turned on Wayne's computer with Linux set up on it, it was all bells and whistles and everything worked perfectly and Wayne was impressed.

This time, not so much. We couldn't connect to the Net and we couldn't get the monitor ratio right. It certainly didn't look good. It wasn't... impressive.

Lionel stayed for several hours fiddling with it - must be some sort of record, for him. And then, maybe ten minutes after he'd left (promising to come back on Thursday with better ideas), my Internet connection died.

So then I was on the phone with Sheila, my personal technomage. She has a remote connection to my computer, so it was really cool seeing my cursor moving around and clicking things with my hands behind my head. I felt telekinetic. It turned out that Microsoft had sent an automatic update that was blocking my Net access and it couldn't be removed or changed. It took Sheila several hours to work around it, but she prevailed. She is a god among mortals. And she solved a few other problems while she was at it.¹

By then I was tired and never wanted to look at another computer, at least until I'd had some sleep.

~ ~ ~

¹ If you have computer troubles, I'd recommend her: she really does fix things, she has a nice personality, and she can work remotely on computers anywhere in North America (maybe the rest of the world too), either by instructing the owner by phone, or by doing it directly by remote access, as she did with me. Her website is Computer Tamers.

Then when I told her about Lionel's problems setting up my Linux, she laughed. "It's never easy the first time," she said.

Well... not usually.

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Sheila: very impressive.

Brings to mind a quote from A Night in the Lonesome October which I try to reread every year: "Impressive. What they are, and what got done to them."

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good line!

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

If Sheila hasn't done this already: turn OFF the Windows automatic updates.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I had turned off the 'automatic updates' months ago. That's what makes it so annoying - the 'update' came through anyway, bypassing my cancelling of it, and couldn't be removed. They don't leave loopholes when they don't want to.

Grrr.