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There's a movie that was released in the eighties called Scanners. It was about people's heads exploding. In more recent years, people's heads have exploded because they tried to install scanners on their computers. I am one of these. I am only able to write this column because my head was pieced back together using gum, toothpicks, and some wood putty.
Scanners are notoriously difficult to install. The people who design scanners seem to be under the impression that a scanner is such a marvelous device, that after you use it you'll have no need for other parts of your computer -- things like soundcards, modems, and your keyboard. In my case, the computer wouldn't even start. It locked up in the middle of the introductory Windows screen. In earlier versions of Windows, I would have thought this was normal, but recently I've gotten spoiled. As any savvy computer user would do, I logged onto the Internet and downloaded a patch for the scanner, which would allow it to run on my version of Windows and help it to give up its dirty smoking habit. After installing the patch, I was able to log on to my computer without any difficulties. The catch was that the scanner no longer worked. Now, I am aware that computers are complex systems and therefore, like automobiles and the human body, they are prone to break down in ways that are difficult to repair. Because of this, one needs to be patient when dealing with computers. Although computers are complex enough to seem mysterious, one can solve many computer problems utilizing logic, troubleshooting skills, and if those fail, explosives. So I repeated my mantra (which is "pizza") and I jumped backed into the task. I went back online and found that if I made a change to the computer's BIOS, I might be able to get the scanner to work. For those of you who are not technically oriented, BIOS stands for "Bring It On Sucker!" This is because whenever you change your BIOS you run the risk of inadvertently screwing up some other part of your system. I quickly discovered that in my case it was the modem. My modem has become an integral part of my life. Through it I communicate with friends and family, keep up with the news, and learn that sexy young college coeds WANT ME NOW. After hours of troubleshooting, I broke down and renewed my warranty for technical support. It is a commonly expressed generalization that people who are really good with computers are not good with people. I am an exception to this rule, but those poo-head idiots who call themselves technical support people are not. Here are the highlights of my dealings with them: On the first call I got disconnected. On the second call I got instructions that involved dismantling my computer but that didn't work. On the third call I got Martha Stewart on the line and she gave me instructions on how to convert my computer into a high tech planter that would be suitable for a nice Boston fern. This, however, was not as ridiculous as what was suggested by the next person I talked to. He tried to set me up with a TCP/IP connection as if I were on a Local Area Network and then he wanted me to call my Internet service provider and ask them what my IP address was! What a goober! Any dough-brain off the street would have recognized that the software for my ISP could not auto-detect my modem and so it was registering the presence of the network card, which was irrelevant to the IRQ conflict message I was receiving in the device settings for the PCI modem enumerator. It was literally four days after the problem started that I solved it on my own. I won't get into how I did it. It's kind of technical. When I logged on to the Internet the next evening, I received a customer service survey from technical support. I was eager to complete it, but after I had typed a few paragraphs in the comments section, it booted me out. Then, as should be expected, my head exploded. Thank goodness they were able to put me back together again. I could have ended up like Humpty Dumpty -- just another egghead. |
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