disaster

It is with great frustration that I once again announce that this blog is still on hold, with a special shout out to Microsoft "support" this week. After struggling with the rebuild of my PC myself, then a clueless, incompetent local tech shop that moved at a glacial pace, my machine was actually up and running for a little more than a day on Friday. I was far too busy re-installing apps to blog, but a completely minor issue came up and I decided to take advantage of Microsoft technical support, since the previously mentioned tech shop was mysteriously closed for the holiday weekend.

Three hours later, the Microsoft bozo had managed to turn a minor irritant into a full-blown disaster, wiping out weeks of progress before abandoning me to my own devices. Microsoft's ever-dubious technical support has two priorities, by my experience. The first is to make absolutely sure that the person they are dealing with does not have a pirated copy of Windows. Since they cannot be absolutely sure of this over the phone, they are perpetually suspicious. A full 20 minutes was spent grilling me over the details of my installation in order to determine if I was trying to pull a "fast one" on them. None of these details were passed on the hapless bozo designated to "help" me. The second priority is to come with some kind of pretext to dismiss the support request altogether. I was required to list all of the applications I had installed, spelling out most of them, and each of these were completely unfamiliar to my support bozo. "Winamp?", the clown repeated again and again, as if the name somehow translated into "disaster" in his native tongue. Somehow, the implication is that, if you install anything else beyond the OS, then you are some kind of "wise guy". After uninstalling everything except Firefox, which mysteriously would not uninstall (but worked perfectly), and wiping out everything (including the OS) in a "repair" effort, I was told that my new hard drive (two weeks old, high-end, and the least likely thing to cause a problem) was trash. Until I replaced it, Microsoft technical support could not "help" me any further.

A mistaken attempt to modify a Windows component in a working, stable system had brought me into the clutches of Microsoft technical support, which had left me with a useless machine and a preposterous pretext.

So, I post this from a neighbour's machine. I will take my newly-rebuilt PC back to the clueless and glacially-slow shop, and they will restore it at a snail's pace. And Extemporaneous Discourse will once again rise from the digital ashes. Eel pouts will be awarded, Republican idiocy will be exposed, and all will be well again.