Just One Of Those Hellish Days

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Just One Of Those Hellish Days…
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by Dagmar Rakos

That was one of those days - I call them hell days, my friends
call them haunted - when nothing seemed to work.

Everything what could go wrong, went.

First my main desktop computer played it's favorite "dead
beetle" game and didn't want to turn on until I forced it with
the main On/Off switch at the back.

Then my ISP provider pretended I don't exist and quietly and
efficiently kicked me off the Net few seconds after my modem
finally forced it's way to their server.

Seems like ancient Latin would be easier to communicate with at
times than this "computerese" both of the machines are supposed
to understand.

(I wonder when finally the time will come when kicking off your
own customers without first even giving them the opportunity of
choice will become non-acceptable in civilized society.

Actually I am more afraid it will spread and in a few years we
can find ourselves at the front of the food store where we just
been kicked out few minutes after we entered and gave them our
money - bouncing at it's door and pleading: "Let me in! Please,
let me in! I honestly Do need to eat!")

- After I finally was able to log on and successfully closed
down few automatic pop-ups for various communication and
protection software I never heard off I found out that email
from my hosting company is still in the stage of evolution where
according to some mysterious laws of cyber-universe email
messages to "anything-I-put-here@makeyourhobbysell.com" will go
through, but messages to "dagmar@makeyourhobbysell.com" will be
rejected by my hosting company vigilant server as a "bad,
malfunctioned address". Or maybe they are just finicky, they
simply don't like my name.

Anyway, it's too personal and what-do-I-think Internet belongs
to machines it doesn't need some stupid softy human touch…

When I clawed my way through my handy Mailwasher anti-spam
preview program, and marked the usual spam dirt (offers for
enlarged penis, and Viagra and such stuff - mind you I am a
woman!) from my boxes on the servers - incredibly enough this
time all my hosts and even fussy ISP didn't object to bouncing
the spam dirt back to its senders.

Then as a kick to my over-inflated ego (from at least something
finally working) I got a message from my credit card processing
company that they changed everything they could due to
enhancement of their service, and everything will be better and
safer and faster and brighter, and nice and sunny, blah, blah,
blah… (all that jazz) - which automatically raised my
"Catastrophe!" alert sensors at their highest level - and the
"insignificant triviality" they want from me is to go to their
site and check my user ID and password and if it doesn't work
get myself a new one.

Naturally my red light of High Alert/Danger! was correct - as
by the time even the first page of their "efficiently improved"
site downloads, I am able to go to washroom, clean my hands,
break up my 2 little terriers fight for one of my new shoes I
forgot to hide into closet, and get myself a drink.

Then after my return to computer I find out that of course I
was "affected" with all those improvements as my old merchant ID
and password don't work anymore, so after another round of
breaks (including walking with the dogs around the backyard) - I
am able to set up my new user name and password.

Finally I am let inside my new super duper over-secured
merchant account only to find out that That's all! I am inside,
but I am not allowed to do anything - not even see my personal
info, not to mention my products.

Obviously I am not authorized to view my own merchant account
because for sure I am breaking some of those newest super-duper
efficient security measures, and no doubt breaking also
Geneva's peace conventions, not to mention main guidelines of
NATO's Supreme Command and a couple of Helsinki's pacts - and
everything about me has been documented including my age, sex
(yes, I do like it!), location, eating habits (yes, I do eat in
front of my computer!), the size of my shoes, and the matter I
haven't washed my hands before I came back to the keyboard after
playing with my dogs while I was waiting for their page to
appear on my screen.

Besides, how do I ever dare to want something from them when
they already have my money and the number of my Credit card!

After I finally gave up and I wrote a support ticket to them -
which went happily ignored for the next 28 hours till I was able
to fix it by myself the next day repeating laboriously all the
steps again with another ID and another password (obviously my
personal name is not liked here in North America) - I attempted
to download one .exe file but my favorite monster download
program Go!zilla had obviously more important things to do than
to be bothered by some boring download.

So I right clicked and attempted to save the file through my
browser which did at least show me the open envelope icon which
means in Microsoftese doing "something", but disappeared after
few seconds without giving me the choice where I actually want
this thing to reside on my computer - apparently got lost
somewhere inside the final frontiers of cyber-space where no
human being ever been yet.

3 minutes after my Internet connection was gleefully cut off
for the 28th time, my computer delivered me another one of it's
favorites: Not enough memory!

Not enough memory…?

Right! Evidently that is too much to ask from Pentium III
machine, with 550 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM and 40 GB Hard-
drive to run 2 browsers and 2 Notepads simultaneously. How do I
dare? I can type, or cut and paste, don't I?

I gave up before the blue screen of computer death kicked in.

At least I have a motivation to go for a High speed access…
- so I can get my error messages and computer "surprises" much
faster!

One of these days….

Copyright © Dagmar Rakos

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