Posted 7:33 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

A tough couple of weeks

On the evening of Feb. 11th, one of those nightmares all computer users face occured to me. In an attempt to fight off the "worms" that are invading address lists and sending false emails, I tried to install a firewall, produced by Computer Associates. In a manner typical of designers who don't have to use their own systems, CA sent me a very long "key" in an email. During installation, you're instructed to close all Windows programs, which I dutifully did. The next installation screen then asks for the "key" from the email. Thinking I was taking the safe route, I exited from the installation to reopen Outlook Express to retrieve the "key". That was the beginning of a series of vexing occurances.

Exiting the installation program caused a serious problem. I had to reboot, but Windows came back up in just 16 colors and 640 x 480 resolution. Failing to solve that problem in the obvious ways, I phoned Dell, who had me roll back the registry to the previous day's settings. That solved the visual problem, returning my screen to it's former glory. Not until I had profusely thanked the Dell service person and hung up did I notice that I could not get online... that the uninstalled firewall was blocking me. All my attempts at uninstalling the firewall software were futile.

I phoned Roadrunner (who had recommended the firewall) and they put me on hold with Computer Associates. The Roadrunner guy and I were on hold together for 45 minutes (he checked back occasionally). I stayed on hold, listening to CA's music-on-hold for over 3 hours, until 3 AM, and finally gave up.

More calls to Roadrunner, who finally got through to CA, who tried everything I had tried, and finally wanted to edit the Registry, but RegEdit wouldn't run. They insisted they needed RegEdit, so I went back to Dell... but RegEdit falls under Operating System support, which is not free. For $49 I could talk to them. Being broke and having no assurance that would solve the problem, I did my best to get either Roadrunner or CA to "own" the problem, as they like to say, and do whatever was needed to solve it... to no avail.

So, my PC, which I use all day every day, was completely offline... high speed internet access, but I couldn't get to it. After several times driving 15 minutes to use another PC, I resorted to pulling out an 8-year-old PC I'm surprised I didn't toss when I moved. I've managed to get it running AND online, but it's far from the same. It's CD drive and floppy drive no longer work, so my only means of getting data from my newer PC to my older one is to write data to floppies, take them to another online PC, and email them to myself... all that to move data 3 feet.

I'm going to have to save data from my newer PC, then reformat the whole hard disk and reload everything from scratch. It's a mammoth job, because I've used it intensely for 4 years and accumulated untold files.

There are ways to prevent such problems, and I have friends who do so, but such solutions require considerable expenditure and time. Even suffering this setback does not convince me that those efforts are really worthwhile, unless money is really no object.

My old PC certainly has problems (or I wouldn't have replaced it). Word doesn't work, all software still running has older versions, some of which can't be updated because it's running Win95 and only has 32MB of memory. The PC itself seems incredibly slow after having used a much faster one for 4 years. I can certainly remember now why I replaced it, but I'm using it again, operating in a clearly crippled fashion.

The moral of the story? Computers suck! That's not a recently-formed opinion, but one I've had for a long time. After 40+ years of using them, I came to that conclusion long ago. I've said for years that the only good reason for working in the computer business is the good money available... otherwise I would have quit it long ago. The stress, cost, and frustration is serious.

It's clear to me that computer work for pay is nearly at an end for me. Perhaps I'll still do some, but I'm quite sure that I will never again be as dependent on a computer as I have been. The alternative? Perhaps real life... real work?

Posted 9:28 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

War update
In case you hadn't noticed on my front page, news reports are that over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have now been killed as a result of our invasion there. My "cemetary" count of 8,235 is a bare, unquestioned, proven minimum, as reported by Iraq Body Count.

The number of Americans killed there has zoomed to 532. As if 532 deaths were not serious enough, consider that 20 times that many Iraq civilians are gone.

Quite aside from the deaths, over 3,000 Americans have been wounded in Iraq, and many of those wounds are crippling, devastating, life-changing wounds... limbs gone, faces obliterated... wounds that will not heal and disappear with the passage of time.

Even more than the physical wounds, I worry about the severe mental damage being done to our young military personnel. Military suicides are above "normal" because of the constant danger, and the mind-twisting fact that the attacks are coming from the people our military was sent there to "liberate". Soldiers can intellectually justify killing other soldiers, but having to live with the killing of an enormous number of non-combatants, including women and children, is a horrid fate to wish on such young, idealistic Americans.