Oy Vey

Things are not going well in the Computer Department of Dawn Inc. right now. We are having many a technical difficulty. For some reason unknown to anyone but the Mystery Computer Virus almost every single program on my computer has been deleted. Word. Excel. Photoshop. Illustrator. InDesign. Dreamweaver. Final Draft. Spider Solitaire. And many more. Adios. No mas. Oy vey.

So then.

I'm told I have to get ALL my files off of my computer so that I can then put in some magical CD that will destroy the computer and rebuild it to how it was when it came out of the box. Only when it came out of the box it had like three little tiny desktop icons and the same amount of programs. Seeing as though I spend about 95% of my time on my computer you may not be surprised that my desktop is now COVERED with links to programs. Useless links now, but links nonetheless. So I have to reinstall EVERY SINGLE program I had on my computer. Which would be fine and dandy if I actually had all of the installation discs. I do not. I will not go into detail about why I don't have all the installation discs, but let's just say that they weren't all mine to keep.

Thankfully I have a laptop that has a good deal of "my" programs on it, so I can use it until I'm able to piece together my old computer. What I didn't have on the laptop was DSL. I also didn't have the installation disc from my DSL. (cause why save one of the few discs that is rightfully mine, really?) So I had to try to download the info from the internet so that I could then transfer it over to my laptop and be a functioning member of society with full use of the internet. And iTunes.

But I had to do all this at about 11 o'clock in the evening. Which, as it turns out, is about some o'clock in the workday for people in Bangladesh, or wherever the hell the helpline people are. Okay, now really, I'm all about We Are The World, everyone is equal and all that crap. But can we please get NATO to agree that in order to man helplines you HAVE TO SPEAK COMPREHENSIBLE ENGLISH? Please. I'm begging you. I don't know if I can face years and years of poor English combined with my poor hearing to create the Lifetime of No Real Help Ever Received.

I was thinking of trying to write a dialog of my conversation with the Worst English Speaker Ever, but I don't even know how I would do it, cause all I heard for 85% of the time are words and sounds that were completely untranslatable into the written word. My e-mail address is throwing_starfish. It took 25 minutes to get that across to her. I was put on hold twice. Because chrowing_tarfish seemed logical enough to her, didn't send up any red flags that that may be a misspelling, and she just couldn't figure out why on earth she couldn't find my account. And we don't even want to go into what happened when she tried to spell things for my deaf ass. It's not good when you swear someone is saying, "V as is in Hotel, S as in Teesidnfal." If I had an audio recording of our conversation it would easily become the bestselling CD of all time. I really didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Later in the evening crying seemed to be the only option when it appeared as though I was going to have to make another call to Botswana tonight. My laptop just wasn't working and I was just about to throw myself out the window. But it's cold outside and with my luck I'd somehow land on my car and then have to figure out how to get it fixed too, so I decided to just make another call. This time a beautiful human being from the Philippines answered my call. She spoke better English than I did. There was no spelling, only joy and help and connected internets. I told her I loved her. Again, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

So I just decided to blog.