Technical Support
Technical Support.
The internet has died. This is something that I’m unaccustomed to dealing with. As an out and out science fiction obsessive with a deep seated need to be among, and converse with, my own kind, the internet is my key to socialisation on the most basic of levels. It is my key to conversations about a subject that I am both passionate and overly vocal about. It is also my only way of accessing repeats of shows that I love and are not yet available (through my limited budget or other evils) on dvd.
This is what I was half way through doing when it crashed and burnt this evening. I wanted to watch Sherlock again, The Great Game to be more precise. For a show that only ran for three episodes it worked it’s way into my heart and brain with the same frightening ease of Star Trek, Stargate (both SG-1 and Atlantis) and Supernatural. Though other shows have wormed their way in, it usually takes more than three episodes before they become a big part of my brain space. With so many shows and books lurking in the limited memory that my brain holds it’s a wonder that I have room left for much of anything else. I do, however, and taking up part of that space now is Sherlock.
I was actually on MSN with a friend of mine and we were about to embark on a rewatching of the final episode, we were going to discuss everything as and when it happened. I started BBC i-Player, I waited patiently, and then I got the error message, the one that says that the link does not appear to be working. I look down at the corner of my screen and see two flashing computer monitors and no little world.
I fret, I panic, I tweet my friend from my phone and tell him that there has been a small disaster. Then I turn the computer off, wait a minute and turn it on again. Nothing. Big stinking nada. So I try it again and turn off the router at the same time. Still nothing. It’s now five minutes since my, admittedly pathetic, plans for the evening turned into a geek’s hell and I’m worried. I want to watch my Sherlock but it looks like this is going to be one for the long haul. I tweet my friend and tell him (and the group) to go on without me.
Then I call Technical Support.
I have respect for these people. Every day they deal with idiots who panic because their computer won’t turn on primarily because they failed to turn it on at the wall. This evening I went through three Tech Specialists because my laptop, and mum’s PC (which also ceased working and she turned it off and left it without a word to me), decided not to play by the rules.
“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” The lovely man of undermined origin asks me.
“Of course,”
“Could you do it again for me?”
“I did it three times, what difference would doing it again make?” I demand, patience worn a little thin with my need to gaze at the perfect sculptures of Benedict Cumberbatch’s cheekbones as Holmes and Watson snark at each other.
“Fair point, Miss, can you do it anyway but turn off the router at the same time.”
Again I’ve already done this, no harm in doing it again, though, so I comply with the request grumbling all the while. I turn the PC on again, ignoring my laptop for the moment because I’m assuming that if I fix one, I’ve fixed the other.
Big, steaming, technicolour pile of nothing.
Bugger.
“Is it just this computer, Miss?” Male person asks.
“No,” I tell him a little snidely, “there’s the three laptops that belong to me and my siblings that don’t connect either.”
“I see,” you can tell from the confused note in his voice that he doesn’t and I wonder if maybe I should have said ‘yes’ or ‘sisters’. Too late now, he’s mumbling away and giving me additional instructions about resetting an IP address and router information. It doesn’t work, he refers me on to another number with another guy. This second dude lasts all of three minutes before he seems to think that my problem is beyond him and jumps me up to the next level.
This concerns me. I know that the PC is temperamental at the best of times, but surely a simple internet problem shouldn’t be that hard to fix. Phil, my final techie and the lovely northerner that I spent an hour talking to while mum mocked in the background, agreed with me.
Finally he tells me that he thinks it might be partly to do with mum’s PC and that some internal error is preventing him from fixing a simple problem. He asks me to link my old and rather decrepit laptop (the battery no longer works so it has to stay permanently plugged in, rather defeating the purpose of the thing) directly to the router. I dutifully follow instructions, noting that my little group is now an hour into their re-watch and I’m going to have missed them entirely by the time I’m done. Nothing for it but to do as I’m told.
Phil walks me through solving the problem with my laptop in about ten minutes. Before I let him close the call I decide to see if it’s been solved on the PC. It hasn’t. We spend the next hour trying different command prompts, entering IP addresses and rebooting the computer so much that the usually slow process actually speeds up. I see more about the inner programming of computers than I ever needed or wanted to know. I’m going to do a Sherlock and delete it from my personal hard drive just as soon as I’m done.
Mum mocks me some more, I giggle, Phil commiserates that this is not really how I would have wanted to spend my Saturday night. He’s so sweet that I can’t bring myself to tell him that my only plans were to fangirl over Sherlock with several friends of mine (and Tom has put up with the brunt of my fangirling over the years it must be said). Besides, I don’t know that he would understand. I laugh, brush it off a little bit, and ignore the incredulous look from my mother.
We try a few more things.
Heaping great Chucking piles of nothing whatsoever. Even Phil is barely restraining himself from swearing at the computer down the phone.
“I think I should just go with my initial reaction and toss it out the window,” I tell him with a smile. On the other end of the line I hear a snort. He agrees but doesn’t say as much.
“Alright, we’ll try one more thing, if you’re up to it, and then I’ll have to pass it onto the next tier.” So my first thought is that maybe I should have told him about the fangirling part of the evening, we’re notorious for our dirty minds and the first part of the sentence sent my mind straight there. The second thought is more along the lines of ‘good grief you must be joking! It can’t be that bad’. So we try this one last thing, reboot the computer three more times in the process and wait.
I open Internet Explorer.
I watch it load.
“Bollocks!”
“Still not working?” And this time you can hear the smirk in his voice, the barely restrained giggle. I may have been technically challenged this evening, but I did it with a sense of humour and didn’t get mad at him. In the background I can hear another of his colleagues obviously suffering from the opposite problem, his customer is frustrated at the not working computer and taking it out on the other guy.
“No. Damn. Sorry,” reduced to one word sentences. The evening has been far more stressful than necessary.
“That’s alright, there isn’t anything else that I can do at this level, though, you’ll need to call another number. Do you want to do that tonight, or would you rather wait until tomorrow?”
It’s a hint, subtle but a hint all the same, fifteen minutes until the call centre closes and if they’re on the phone to me at the time they will have to stay until they fix it. I take pity on them. I’m tired, my laptop works for the moment, and mum isn’t all that bothered about the PC so long as she isn’t paying for an internet she will never be able to use.
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
Actually, Mum will, and she’s even more computer challenged than I am. I’m at a work party tomorrow afternoon so I won’t have time to argue with a computer while a techie walks me through the process. I take the appropriate phone number down, thank Phil for trying so hard and end the call. Mum is curled up on the couch with a book, disappointed that the entertainment is over so soon and I withdraw to see if any of the group are still online.
They aren’t, my chance at fangirling for the evening is gone. This calls for quantities of alcohol not conducive with an early start for breakfast tomorrow morning, and loads of crisps. I consoled myself with ice cream earlier this evening.
Think I’m going to need quite a bit more.
The internet has died. This is something that I’m unaccustomed to dealing with. As an out and out science fiction obsessive with a deep seated need to be among, and converse with, my own kind, the internet is my key to socialisation on the most basic of levels. It is my key to conversations about a subject that I am both passionate and overly vocal about. It is also my only way of accessing repeats of shows that I love and are not yet available (through my limited budget or other evils) on dvd.
This is what I was half way through doing when it crashed and burnt this evening. I wanted to watch Sherlock again, The Great Game to be more precise. For a show that only ran for three episodes it worked it’s way into my heart and brain with the same frightening ease of Star Trek, Stargate (both SG-1 and Atlantis) and Supernatural. Though other shows have wormed their way in, it usually takes more than three episodes before they become a big part of my brain space. With so many shows and books lurking in the limited memory that my brain holds it’s a wonder that I have room left for much of anything else. I do, however, and taking up part of that space now is Sherlock.
I was actually on MSN with a friend of mine and we were about to embark on a rewatching of the final episode, we were going to discuss everything as and when it happened. I started BBC i-Player, I waited patiently, and then I got the error message, the one that says that the link does not appear to be working. I look down at the corner of my screen and see two flashing computer monitors and no little world.
I fret, I panic, I tweet my friend from my phone and tell him that there has been a small disaster. Then I turn the computer off, wait a minute and turn it on again. Nothing. Big stinking nada. So I try it again and turn off the router at the same time. Still nothing. It’s now five minutes since my, admittedly pathetic, plans for the evening turned into a geek’s hell and I’m worried. I want to watch my Sherlock but it looks like this is going to be one for the long haul. I tweet my friend and tell him (and the group) to go on without me.
Then I call Technical Support.
I have respect for these people. Every day they deal with idiots who panic because their computer won’t turn on primarily because they failed to turn it on at the wall. This evening I went through three Tech Specialists because my laptop, and mum’s PC (which also ceased working and she turned it off and left it without a word to me), decided not to play by the rules.
“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” The lovely man of undermined origin asks me.
“Of course,”
“Could you do it again for me?”
“I did it three times, what difference would doing it again make?” I demand, patience worn a little thin with my need to gaze at the perfect sculptures of Benedict Cumberbatch’s cheekbones as Holmes and Watson snark at each other.
“Fair point, Miss, can you do it anyway but turn off the router at the same time.”
Again I’ve already done this, no harm in doing it again, though, so I comply with the request grumbling all the while. I turn the PC on again, ignoring my laptop for the moment because I’m assuming that if I fix one, I’ve fixed the other.
Big, steaming, technicolour pile of nothing.
Bugger.
“Is it just this computer, Miss?” Male person asks.
“No,” I tell him a little snidely, “there’s the three laptops that belong to me and my siblings that don’t connect either.”
“I see,” you can tell from the confused note in his voice that he doesn’t and I wonder if maybe I should have said ‘yes’ or ‘sisters’. Too late now, he’s mumbling away and giving me additional instructions about resetting an IP address and router information. It doesn’t work, he refers me on to another number with another guy. This second dude lasts all of three minutes before he seems to think that my problem is beyond him and jumps me up to the next level.
This concerns me. I know that the PC is temperamental at the best of times, but surely a simple internet problem shouldn’t be that hard to fix. Phil, my final techie and the lovely northerner that I spent an hour talking to while mum mocked in the background, agreed with me.
Finally he tells me that he thinks it might be partly to do with mum’s PC and that some internal error is preventing him from fixing a simple problem. He asks me to link my old and rather decrepit laptop (the battery no longer works so it has to stay permanently plugged in, rather defeating the purpose of the thing) directly to the router. I dutifully follow instructions, noting that my little group is now an hour into their re-watch and I’m going to have missed them entirely by the time I’m done. Nothing for it but to do as I’m told.
Phil walks me through solving the problem with my laptop in about ten minutes. Before I let him close the call I decide to see if it’s been solved on the PC. It hasn’t. We spend the next hour trying different command prompts, entering IP addresses and rebooting the computer so much that the usually slow process actually speeds up. I see more about the inner programming of computers than I ever needed or wanted to know. I’m going to do a Sherlock and delete it from my personal hard drive just as soon as I’m done.
Mum mocks me some more, I giggle, Phil commiserates that this is not really how I would have wanted to spend my Saturday night. He’s so sweet that I can’t bring myself to tell him that my only plans were to fangirl over Sherlock with several friends of mine (and Tom has put up with the brunt of my fangirling over the years it must be said). Besides, I don’t know that he would understand. I laugh, brush it off a little bit, and ignore the incredulous look from my mother.
We try a few more things.
Heaping great Chucking piles of nothing whatsoever. Even Phil is barely restraining himself from swearing at the computer down the phone.
“I think I should just go with my initial reaction and toss it out the window,” I tell him with a smile. On the other end of the line I hear a snort. He agrees but doesn’t say as much.
“Alright, we’ll try one more thing, if you’re up to it, and then I’ll have to pass it onto the next tier.” So my first thought is that maybe I should have told him about the fangirling part of the evening, we’re notorious for our dirty minds and the first part of the sentence sent my mind straight there. The second thought is more along the lines of ‘good grief you must be joking! It can’t be that bad’. So we try this one last thing, reboot the computer three more times in the process and wait.
I open Internet Explorer.
I watch it load.
“Bollocks!”
“Still not working?” And this time you can hear the smirk in his voice, the barely restrained giggle. I may have been technically challenged this evening, but I did it with a sense of humour and didn’t get mad at him. In the background I can hear another of his colleagues obviously suffering from the opposite problem, his customer is frustrated at the not working computer and taking it out on the other guy.
“No. Damn. Sorry,” reduced to one word sentences. The evening has been far more stressful than necessary.
“That’s alright, there isn’t anything else that I can do at this level, though, you’ll need to call another number. Do you want to do that tonight, or would you rather wait until tomorrow?”
It’s a hint, subtle but a hint all the same, fifteen minutes until the call centre closes and if they’re on the phone to me at the time they will have to stay until they fix it. I take pity on them. I’m tired, my laptop works for the moment, and mum isn’t all that bothered about the PC so long as she isn’t paying for an internet she will never be able to use.
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
Actually, Mum will, and she’s even more computer challenged than I am. I’m at a work party tomorrow afternoon so I won’t have time to argue with a computer while a techie walks me through the process. I take the appropriate phone number down, thank Phil for trying so hard and end the call. Mum is curled up on the couch with a book, disappointed that the entertainment is over so soon and I withdraw to see if any of the group are still online.
They aren’t, my chance at fangirling for the evening is gone. This calls for quantities of alcohol not conducive with an early start for breakfast tomorrow morning, and loads of crisps. I consoled myself with ice cream earlier this evening.
Think I’m going to need quite a bit more.