At the Whim of a Hat

Free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat. –George W.

I was getting ready for work and heading out – I had a travel cup full of coffee (no sugar, a little ½ & ½) in my hand and I walked down the relatively short length of the kitchen to the end of the table. There were two outdoor pillows propped up on the top of the chair and on the table, we’d taken them in when it looked like it was going to rain and had nowhere else to put them.

I set my hat on top of these pillows the night before, and now, running just a few minutes late for work, I gathered my laptop bag, my ID card and needed only my hat before I headed out to another glorious adventure in cubeville.

As I reached for my hat, as if by some invisible practical joker, the pillows and hat suddenly and inexplicably tumbled just as I was about to grab the hat.

Automatically, I set down the coffee cup in my other hand so I could grab the falling fluff and save my hat. I did NOT, however, set the coffee cup on a level surface.

Having been denied pillows and hat, gravity then switched its attention to the coffee cup. It spun in place and fell over, spraying hot coffee (no sugar, a little ½ & ½) all over my pants and shirt. I mopped up the table, and the relatively new wood laminate floor, and then went to change my clothes.

I arrived at work and discovered that my little section of cubeville had no power. The electrician had come by the night before and turned off the power so he could rewire something or another and it got too late for him, so he went home, promising to arrive by 7:30 the next morning. I begin my day at 5:30. That meant two hours before he even showed up, let alone got the thing rewired and the power back on.

I suppose that if I shuffled papers all day, two or three hours without power wouldn’t be that great of a hardship, but the fact is, I am a programmer. I can do NOTHING without being on a PC. On this particular occasion, we were having an issue with a program the vender said was compatible with a change and wasn’t (See No Fan of Monday), so I could NOT sit around for 3 hours with nothing to do, and there wasn’t a convenient empty cube in cubeville for a temporary squatter.

There was, however, and empty cube not too far from me. Though it didn’t have the connectivity I needed, it did have a power strip sitting forlorn and abandon on the desk. I found two more of these and strung a set of four power strips (one I already had) across the hallway and into the far wall behind the printer.

I now had a working PC, but it wouldn’t connect. It took me about five minutes to realize that because I have multiple PCs at my desk, I have an automatic switch box which allows me to connect all three PCs to the network on a single cable. The switchbox is also electric. So I stretched my jury-rigged cord across the cube and onto my lap so I could plug it in too.

So, for three hours, I had a trip hazard across the floor and a power strip nestled in my lap like fidgety cat. There was palette of old server parts parked in the hallway next to the printer waiting for someone to claim it, and as a safety precaution, the people who’d left it there had put out little orange safety cones. I appropriated some of these and set them down on the top of my handmade power run.

I did get the application fixed, however.

Later that day, I installed the video card in the PC at home. I have replaced thousands of video cards. It’s no big deal, pop it in, install the software, close it up – done. The memory SIMM I installed (1GB – yikes), slid in and worked perfectly. The video card required standing on it to get it into the slots, but it slid in eventually.

The card worked fine, but then I went to install the drivers. The manufacturer was quite specific, DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVERS UNDER WINDOWS FOUND SOFTWARE WIZARD. So I let their install CD come up and the first thing it did was tell me it couldn’t install the new drivers, because old drivers were still active, and these needed to be uninstalled first.

That’s just crazy. Without video drivers, you don’t have video. Without video, you are working with a black screen. Yet, this @#@$# software would NOT install. Reluctantly, I did as requested, assuming that the manufacturer actually knew what they were talking about. By this time, I’m sure you’ve imagined the consequences of such foolish assumptions.

The PC forced a reboot, and that was the last time I saw my desktop.

I spent an hour on the phone with tech support from the card company, the kid I was speaking to knew less about PCs than I did, and eventually he gave up and told me to – gotta love this – CONTACT MICROSOFT SUPPORT.

Yeah, right. Microsoft support charges like calling 1-900-BABE and gives you less for your money. In fact Microsoft support is an oxymoron, much like "tax reform" or "controlled burn".

After two days of trying to get ANYTHING to work (included safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, safe mode with networking, BIOS changes, Bootable disks, kicking and screaming) I finally had to run - restore.

Yes, it brought back my windows, but it brought it back in the same configuration as it was the day I bought the thing. Most of the customizations I’ve made over 18 moths, many of the applications I’ve installed and their drivers were wiped out in a single key stroke.

Now I’m back to reinstalling apps, turning off free AOL offers and MSN connectivity wizards and all the little annoying bits of s**** that comes with a windows package. I’ll be doing that for some time to come, I’m afraid.

But hey, the new espresso maker is working great!

That’s what I need – more caffeine.