I don’t know if my planets were spinning backwards, if I did some heinous thing in a past life, or if it’s just my turn, but I’ve been in Techno Hell for a week. A week ago Monday I was in the middle of a phone call with a client in Toronto, Canada when the phone went dead. That’s when all the “fun” began. It actually took me about 15 minutes to figure out that my internet was down. I had called several days before and asked Frontier to have the TV part of my service removed while keeping and upgrading the FIOS internet. They cut off everything. Hmm.
Okay, so that took about an hour and a half of phone time on my very rudimentary “stupid” (meaning not smart) cell phone. Then, about three hours later, the internet went 
out again. With that boondoggle I was on the phone from about 2:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The phone battery literally died. I rebooted, rewired, unplugged and fussed with every piece of equipment in the house. I was disconnected once. In total I talked with eight plus people at Frontier (after a while I lost track). One person (I think she was about number six) decided to take this opportunity to sell me some security products. Really? Shirley, you jest! (Okay, her name wasn’t Shirley but it should have been!)
The last call on Monday, August 3rd was to schedule someone to come out and fix the blasted thing. He started with “we can come on Friday”. I was thinking he must have been related to Shirley J I pointed out that this was my phone and what I needed was to be able to work. He “expedited” me to Wednesday. Yipee!
On Wednesday Grumpy Gus showed up and discovered that the cable to my house had been cut. Many large trees in my complex had been cut down and the stumps ground up. I’m guessing that is when it happened. They ground up my cable, too. More fun. Gus informed me it would take about 10 days to have the people come out and rebury the cable. The eventual compromise was that the cable was strung from the Frontier box, across my neighbor’s yard, to my house. Whew.
But wait, it’s not over! Last Friday, my HP wireless printer decided that it couldn’t talk to the ‘puter. I frankly didn’t have the energy to deal with it that day. Over the weekend I spent hours downloading things from HP and fussing with it. I finally got the printer to work with a cable…and I’m keeping it that way. Don’t need no stinking wireless connection.
But (yes, another one) my system was now clogged with all sorts of muck from HP. And now, finally, a real hero arrives. Tom Shannon (503) 236-9570 tshann@gmail.com is my “go to” guy with computer related messes. I emailed him this morning and he remotely got onto my computer and cleaned up the mess…and it was a stubborn, sticky one. HP is apparently really good at gunking up things! Tom is really good at untangling the techno knot and getting things functional again. He is reliable, effective, personable, and one thing I really cherish – he relates to me in my language which is definitely NOT techno!
My life became infinitely better with his help. And there is a delightful little bonus, which is the laughter that ensued when he pulled up the PC Decrapifier website. So, with a little help from the decrapifier, the bad things that were clogging up the system are flushed away and the air is clear! Thank you Tom!
Ka-ching
Shell