I have to preface this post with a disclaimer…If you don’t want to listen to my computer problem rantings, just wait until tomorrow. But really why wouldn’t you want to listen to my complaining…everyone here at work had to today. 
I bought a new Gateway computer for work in April of 2007. The new computer had the Vista operating system on it. The home edition. I needed the business ultimate edition, since my work computer is on a network and the home edition is not network capable. I purchased the upgrade on the Internet and they sent me the key I needed to install the upgrade.
Easy right…here’s where the madness comes in. I tried and tried and tried to install the upgrade. My IT guy tried to install the upgrade, for three days. Finally I call the Microsoft people, of course it took me many phone calls to find the right number…and you guessed it the guy I finally talk to about my problem is in India. Nice enough guy and he seemed to know his stuff, but I was on the phone with him for a day and a half. We finally got the upgrade installed. I did a little dance, promised the gentleman in India my first born child…too bad for him I am 51 years old and no child yet. What are the odds I will make good on the bet.
Now you might think, ahhh, she is good to go. For a few months, yes. Worked like a charm. Fastest computer I have ever worked on. I mean screaming fast. Then out of no where my hard drive goes bad, I call Gateway and they send me a new one. My IT guy installs it, and up and running I am. Now you might think this is the end of my little story…and a good one it is. But alas, the mother board decides it is finished living and commits suicide. I call Gateway, they tell me to take it to a local computer store that services Gateways and they will send the new mother board to the store. Now mind you all this while, bad hard drives, bad mother boards, and so on, I am without a computer, well luckily I still have my old one. So me and my old buddy become reacquainted real fast.
I finally get my computer back, new mother board installed. Not a penny spent because it is under warranty. The one good thing about the problems I encountered…still under warranty.
About three weeks ago I started having problems accessing a donor database program that I use. I have to interject here that we do not have a permanent staff person that handles our IT, we outsource it to a contract IT person. Anyway, I email this person about my problem and remotely accessed my old computer to use the donor program I needed. Luckily I still have my old computer and it works fine. I never heard from our IT guy and then I went on vacation for a week. When I came back last week I was catching up and since I could access the program remotely from another computer I was okay for awhile.
I knew as soon as I had the IT guy come and look at my computer there would be considerable down time. Boy was I right. He finally came Monday to look at my computer to determine what the problem was. Not to get into technicalities here…long story short, after he left at 1 p.m. yesterday I could not access my computer at all. My computer had locked us out and we could not ascertain what the password was. I was of course in the middle of several projects and the program I needed to use, web design software was on my new computer, and I didn ‘t have the same program on my old computer…so now I was stuck.
Usually it works for us to outsource our IT work, but every once in a while, something major goes wrong and our IT guy can’t get to us as soon as we would like. This is maddening, because then the down time is so unproductive, plus deadlines do not get met.
Finally yesterday at 5:15 he showed up to continue working on my computer. He did get it working before I left for home, so everyone keep your fingers crossed. The strange thing is…he couldn’t tell me what went wrong, he just had to reset the operating system back to before the problem. I hope the same problem does not occur again.
I know this post is boring, but it’s all that’s been on my mind for the last few days.
Those are the days, my friend, that I am eternally grateful, that I am married to man who works for a company who probably put the chip in your computer and he can fix my computer with no issues. I swear, he can hear it and tell me what is wrong with it sometimes. I know, that is an exaggeration, but he has been better than any tech support I could ever have. When my hard drive died, he called Dell, and they started saying do this, do that, he just said, I am a Network Security Expert and I did A, B, C and it is dead, it is under warranty. And you are going to send one to me when? I like his authoritative streak when it serves me!
I hope that this fixes it. What did we do before computers?
We used typewriters and word processors. I remember when the word processors came out, the secretary’s in our office were all gaga over them. I am amazed at how dependent we are on our computers. If our network is down at work…we might as well all go home.
OH my heavens! The little gif is TOOOOO funny! That was so me a few weeks ago when I screwed up my site and just about every evening since while I’ve been working on it! lol
I hate to hear you’re having problems with yours… royal pain in the arse huh? Good luck to ya though!
My computer is up and running…thankfully. I do feel just like the fellow in the animation…well, maybe not enough to draw blood…but you get the idea.
I have a Mac at home, but a Gateway at the office. I switch back and forth. It’s fun, I love working with computers and graphic design.