TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

After a long hiatus, I have finally gotten my old computer up and running. Well, my girlfriend got it up and running, but I let her into the house and let her drink some of my juice, so I'd call us 50-50 partners in the endeavor.

Once it was up and running, my girlfriend was dismayed to realize that I lacked any sort of virus protection software. I tried to explain to her that I went to college in the good old days where no one made viruses for computers as sorting that many punch cards was just too much work. She was insistent however, and quickly downloaded a copy of a major company's virus protection software. We'll call them Morton. Wait, that's a salt company, don't want to hurt any feelings there. We'll call them N. Orton. Perfect, that's much better.

Two days after having N. Orton installed on my computer I came home to find a message stating that my account had expired. Noticing that I was receiving this message some 363 days early, I called up my girlfriend and she went to work trying to fix it. First thing she did was try to get the computer to realize it was being stupid. The computer countered with the classic "I know you are, but what am I?" defense.

Seeing no other option, my girlfriend uninstalled N. Orton from my computer and then attempted to reinstall it. "Hold up," said my computer. "You can't triple stamp a double stamp." "I'm not triple stamping anything," replied my girlfriend. "I'm reinstalling an uninstalled program." "Yeah....," said the computer. "About that... N. Orton is still on my hard drive. It's tucked way, way, waaaaaaay back here. Good luck getting that out."

After a handful of attempts, my girlfriend realized it would be best to call in a professional and turned to the N. Orton help page. Logging on she was informed she was 198 in queue and that she would be gotten to in the next 15 minutes. For those of you who don't know, "in queue" is English for "in line" and "15 minutes" is English for "hour".

"15 minutes" later my girlfriend finally got to chat with someone about the uninstalling/reinstalling situation. After 10 minutes of confirming that we were who we claimed to be, our representative, Candy, helpfully informed us that we had what the N. Orton people like to call a "technical problem" and that she would be unable to help us. So Candy helpfully directed us to a new queue. Candy then sent us a "Was this person helpful" survey. I do not believe Candy will be getting a raise based off of my girlfriend's survey answers.

So she waited in queue for another half hour before Nadjir came to the rescue. Nadjir, for those of you playing at home, was Indian. Because, you know, when you're confused by a complex technical issue, the best person to handle it is someone who doesn't speak your language. It'd be like me trying to fix transmissions in Belgium. Only I'd be doing it via internet.

In Nadjir's defense, he was trying his best to be helpful, at least that's what I assume he was doing during the two minute gaps between each conversation. Unfortunately the problem was more complex than he could handle.

Nadjir- Okay, what you will have to do is make sure N. Orton is removed from your computer.
GF- I did that.
...wait...
Nadjir- Okay, now it should work.
GF- No.
...wait...
Nadjir- Now make sure it is removed from your temporary folder.
GF- I did that.
...wait...
Nadjir- Now it should work.
GF- No.
...wait...
Nadjir- Okay, it should work now.
GF- Yes, but it's not.
...wait...
...wait...
Nadjir- Did you remove it from your temporary folder?
GF- Yes.
...wait...
Nadjir- Good. Now it should work.
GF- *sigh*

Four hours after starting the whole ordeal my girlfriend finally decided to bail, cancelling the subscription and filing for a refund. I should have it in 5-7 business days. You know, just as soon as Candy and Nadjir get around to it.

*sigh*