Complicated Relationships

Have you ever had one of those relationships where you practically worship someone...and yet at the same time occasionally want to strangle them? Where some of the things they do make you swoon with delight and warm your heart with childlike joy...and others make you want to work them over with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch?

Such is my relationship with Bill Gates.

On one hand, the guy made geekiness cool, which certainly helps my cause as I struggle to navigate my way through social situations. Before Bill, I was just a dork -- now I'm a dork who just might possess arcane technical skills and therefore might have a slight chance to become accepted by my social superiors. (Well, at least until people find out that my Star Trek obsession is not accompanied by the requisite Dr. Who obsession that indicates true techno-geek worthiness. Unfortunately, my deep personal commitment to Green Acres doesn't seem to carry the same intellectual clout. Sigh.)

On the other hand, Herr Gates' famous Windows® "Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)®" is an evil pox upon the land, and one of the most horrible things a human being can be forced to encounter.

In fact, I find myself wondering if there's any way to prosecute its inventor for crimes against humanity -- surely the BSOD is 1000 times worse than anything that ever took place at Guantanamo Bay, right? It's not just the fact that your computer suddenly stopped working right in the middle of a YouTube video or something, which is bad enough...it's the fact that the BSOD is merely an omen of the ordeal to come. The "help" you receive from the error message isn't all that helpful: "STOP: 0x0000008E" -- and the line "Beginning dump of physical memory" sounds like either a very painful biological procedure or the herald of doomsday for your computer.

After doing some extensive research, I found out that "STOP: 0x0000008E" really means "A couple of your programs don't like each other." The online Help system (which of course you can't get to, since your computer won't run now) instructs you to "remove the driver", which sounds easy enough...until you realize that you have hundreds of drivers, and no idea which one is causing the error.

I'm sure it's OK, though, because when I tried to reboot, I got a dialog box that said "Your system has just recovered from a serious error. Let's tell Microsoft about it, shall we? That's a good lad." (or something like that). I guess it sends some sort of double-secret behind-the-scenes programming code back to Dr. Gates and company, which I am certain they will immediately use to ensure that no one ever has another 0x0000008E error again. Knowing that, I'm sure that I'll sleep well tonight.

Of course, in retrospect, the whole thing is my own fault. (Or perhaps something I can blame on my parsimonious Scottish ancestors.) You see, the whole thing started because I wanted to save some money. My subscription to Norton Antivirus was about to expire, and they wanted $50 to renew for another year. Well, it turns out that my Comcast service (a hideously expensive thing itself, but that's another story) includes a free subscription to the McAfee Security Suite. Heck, I thought, I'll just close out Norton, install McAfee, and will enjoy eternal viruslessness without paying another dime. No sweat.

Well, I'm sure there's no point in telling you the details. Nothing that has to do with computer security is as easy as it seems it should be. You have to completely -- and I mean completely -- remove one product before you can install the other, and as with so many computer tasks, doing the intuitive thing is the wrong thing. But I finally got 'er done.

Then, voila! The BSOD appears.

Grrr. Using "Safe Mode", I was able to look up McAfee's tech support, which said that I needed to call Comcast. Called Comcast; they said I needed to talk to McAfee. Talked to McAfee, and they said I needed to call Microsoft. Called Microsoft and they said they weren't open, and to call back during regular business hours. No hint as to what those regular business hours are, but I suspect that since their tech support people are all in Bangladesh or Moss Eisley or somewhere, it'll be something like midnight 'till 4am.

I shoulda just paid Norton their fifty bucks. And that may still be the final solution, though I'm not at all confident that I can remove the McAfee stuff and reinstall Norton without creating a new set of problems. Besides, McAfee is free, so even if it costs me hundreds of hours of labor to get it to work without frying my computer, I should go with it, right?

In the meantime, I'm telling myself to remember that Mr. Gates and his wife donate more to charity than the next 10 biggest donors combined, and that training people in how to use his products kept me employed for nearly 10 years at one point. I have plenty of reasons to love this guy!

But then again, there's that whole "What on Earth were you thinking when you hid all the good functions in Office 2007?" thing, too. Hmm.

Maybe it's time to buy a Mac.

Oh well. I'll let you know how it all turns out, so please stay tuned. In the meantime, please remember to back up your important files...and have a great day!