A Job
Taking a phone call is like going on an adventure. You never know what will happen.
Mom hands the phone to me and says it is someone who says they are a friend of Mrs. B and they have computer trouble.
“Hello?” I take the phone, wondering exactly what this will be. I somehow have the hope that this stranger isn’t going to have a big computer problem . . . just some simple question.
“Hello, Rundy, this is Jean T, a friend of Mrs. B. We’re having some computer trouble over here and Mrs. B highly recommended you. She says you are an expert at these things.”
Few things scare me more than being oversold as an expert, or a genius, at anything. It leaves me with too much to live up to. So I answered that yes I know something about computers, maybe I can help them with their problem, but I’m not an expert.
The problem, it was quickly explained to me, was transferring information from one hard drive to another. The old hard drive in their computer had been making a very bad sound, so a technician had come and replaced the hard drive with a new one. The operating system was supposed to automatically install along with all the programs they originally had on it (the computer was a very new Dell). This left them with all of their personal data stuck on the hard drive that was no longer in their computer. As soon as I began asking Jean T questions she handed the phone over to her husband Bill T.
A few quick questions made the situation pretty clear for me. First, the problem would be very easy for me to fix if I had it right in front of me. Second, there was no way I could walk a technologically illiterate person through the process over the phone. I could just imagine trying to do that: “Well you see, first you need to take off the computer case. Then you need to find your hard drive. See those two wire cables plugged in the back . . .” No, telling them how to do it was out of the question. I would have to show them.
All the while I am talking on the telephone and trying to think of all the necessary questions to ask, I am also trying to think of how I would go about doing this, and whether I’m asking all the questions I should. I have great difficulty talking on the telephone and thinking while I talk on the telephone, so I feel like I am barely keeping my head above water, and only barely keeping up with the conversation. I need to think off the telephone. So I quickly come around to asking for directions to Bill and Jean T’s house.
This brought me to the second thing I loathe doing on the telephone–that is, taking directions. Taking directions over the telephone is a refined and subtle art, an art that I have not mastered. “Okay,” Bill says as I dive for a pad of paper. “You know where the village of Oxford is?”
Trick question, I think. Yes, I know of Oxford’s existence, and I know “generally” where it is, but it will take me five minutes to figure out if I know how to drive there in my head. (Driving directions are normally stored in my head in the form of a visual record of the trip. I am horrible with maps.) Doing a quick memory scan I think I recall driving by a sign for Oxford so I tell Bill yes I know where it is, but I’ve only passed through, so I need detailed directions to his house.
“Okay,” Bill says. “If you’re driving–” I frantically try to write down everything important. Long ago I’ve learned that it is impossible to write down every word someone tells you in directions. You just have to learn what words are important, or you will have the person on the other end repeating everything ten times over. Of course it doesn’t help that only one place out of a hundred has easy directions. The directions to Bill T’s house sound generally not too bad, but his description of taking “a slight turn” and “the road you are on will turn, but you should keep going straight” leaves me a bit nervous. Little half turns, sorta turns, and going straight when the road turns are all things that make me nervous. I absolutely do not like driving situations which are ambiguous. (See my past driving post.) But, I think, everything will be okay. Oxford is not a very big town, and it is on country roads, so I shouldn’t have too much trouble. I get the description of his house, and his address so I can double check the directions on the Internet before I go.
I hang up with the promise that I will be there later in the afternoon. I had already finished my writing for the day and I didn’t see any sense in putting the job off, as much as I don’t like things coming up suddenly. Then I look at the hastily scribbled notes that I took down as Bill T was giving directions in quick succession. It is then I began to have the dawning realization of exactly how badly I thwart all my best efforts at being prepared. In my haste to transcribe the directions I had written “43 Street.” I knew the name of the street wasn’t 43 . . . somehow in my writing I had dropped out the most important bit of information–the name of the street. No problem, is my next thought, I’ll just call Bill back up and ask him for the name of his street again. I’ll feel a bit foolish, but there are worse things. Then I realize that I didn’t ask for Bill’s phone number.
At this point I am feeling really stupid. How am I going to be self-employed if I can’t figure out how to write down the directions to people’s house and remember to ask them for their phone number? As it is, I’ve just finished talking at length with someone and I still don’t know their phone number or where they live. All I have is a bunch of worthless directions on where to turn, along with the cryptic “43 Street, Oxford” and horrible visions of sitting around the house for hours until Bill T calls back up to ask why I haven’t arrived yet. Then I will have the chance to confess that I am so incapable of taking directions that when he gave me directions to his house I wrote down everything but the most important piece of information and I even forgot to ask him for his phone number.
I spend a bit of time mentally flailing myself.
I don’t know what situations my failings will get me into. As it happened in this case I had a recourse which saved me from the humiliation I justly deserved. When Jean T first spoke with me she said she was a friend of Mrs. B. I know that Mrs. B is one of those people not like me. That is, she writes down the addresses and phone numbers of the people she knows. So, if I call Mrs. B she can give me the phone number and the correct street address for Bill and Jean T. Saved!
Mental note to self: Always ask for and write down the phone number and address of everyone you meet. You never know when you might need it.
A Trip
After calling Mrs. B and then looking up directions on the Internet and gathering whatever else I think I might need, I set off for Oxford. One might be inclined to think this was the end of the matter and I safely and easily arrived at Oxford without any further trouble. But such a person does not yet realize that we are talking about me–Rundy. Driving country roads to Oxford ought to be easy, but I can make anything difficult.
I had the driving directions in the car seat beside me, and the little visual images dredged up in my mind from my past forays near or through Oxford. With all this collected together I was on my way. The first hint of trouble was when I came to the first intersection at which I thought I would turn and found things not as I expected. It was, indeed, the intersection I thought it was, and there was a sign for the left turn heading toward Oxford, but the road manifestly did not have the same name as those given in the written instructions I had downloaded from the Internet. At that point I had the option of either sitting at the intersection and trying to puzzle this through, take the turn without thinking about it, or else continue driving straight. True to form, I continued driving straight and immediately decided upon passing the intersection that I should have taken the turn. No big deal. These are country roads. I just continued on until I found a suitable driveway and turned around.
I took the turn but it was most certainly not labeled what the map said it was. This incensed me, as how was any normal person supposed to use directions if the roads didn’t have the proper labels? But, annoyances aside, I was on my way to Oxford.
Unfortunately, my travails were not over. I drove for some miles over the back country roads until I came to another intersection and this one didn’t seem to be anywhere in my directions, and I certainly had never seen it before. So . . . turn left. That sounded like a turn I was supposed to make, and in any case Oxford was probably to the left. I went on, feeling increasingly annoyed, but at the same time thankful this was not Syracuse after dark. There were not a million road choices and if I ever had to turn around I could easily find my way back. The big question at the moment was if I was truly heading toward Oxford or if I should have taken that right turn those miles back?
When I came over the next hill and saw Oxford in the valley below I was pleased to find I had somehow managed to reach the village even thought my directions were actively conspiring against me. I didn’t feel I could trust my directions very well, but on reaching Oxford I saw a street that had a name mentioned in my written directions, so I took it. I came to a light . . . yes, I remember being told to turn at a light. Okay, turn. Maybe this funny split in the road and the little turn ahead was what Bill was talking about. Okay, I see the Great American he mentioned, I must be on the right street. Straight ahead now . . . I still managed to end up driving past Bill and Jean’s house, but I was satisfied that I managed to make all the right turns (somehow) and end up on the right street. Turning around and back-tracking a few houses was nothing.
Before I go any further I will stop this story and say that my directions were not conspiring against me. Any time I get vindictive and self righteous it is a sure sign I am making a fool out of myself. It always happened when I struggled with math, and it seems to always happen with directions. If I loudly proclaim that we must surely take this road, the best odds are that events will prove we should have gone the other way. In this case I was misconstruing the directions–a fact which Mom pointed out to me the next day when I was telling her how bad the directions were.
Yes . . . did I ever tell you I have a hard time understanding maps? A map is the perfect instrument to start me hyper ventilating. A map has all those lines going all over the place, and you can’t tell what anything looks. I wonder who invented maps. They contain so much information that can feel so useless. Standing in the middle of a city looks nothing like all those intersecting lines on a piece of paper.
As it was, I took a map that perhaps wasn’t the clearest and rather than trying to understand the map I simply made it conform with where I thought I ought to go to reach Oxford and ignored all instructions about which road to take. Well, not ignore exactly, I just didn’t read any road signs until I reached the intersection I thought I should take, and then figured there was a grand conspiracy to make that road not have the right name. If I kept road names in my head (instead of simply visual clues like I do) or simply paid attention to road names instead of the landscape I would have realized that the turn I was supposed to have taken was many miles earlier than the turn I actually took.
In my defense the way I took eventually did bring me to Oxford, so it wasn’t like I was entirely wrong. But my way to Oxford involved gallivanting all across the countryside. And as for my directions not matching up with the route I took . . . I apparently don’t know how to follow directions out of a paper bag.
A Computer Headache
When I finally reached Bill and Jean’s house I hoped the worst was over. Computers are something I can handle much better than driving directions. On top of that, this was supposed to be a simple, uncomplicated job.
I come into the house and am told, “Well, things don’t seem to be going like they were supposed to. When the technician left he said the computer was supposed to finish setting itself up and should only take a half hour. It’s been over an hour and a half now and it still has the same message on the screen.”
Uh-oh. I haven’t been there five minutes and already I know the problem is going to be a lot more difficult. I brace myself.
A quick examination of the computer reveals that it is indeed hung. How typical. The Microsoft Windows XP install has a message on the screen saying that the keyboard and mouse have been disabled and the computer should not be restarted under any circumstances. The process, it says, will be completed in 30 minutes. Yeah . . . right. One thing you quickly learn in dealing with computers is a healthy does of skepticism. Don’t trust everything your computer tells you. Verify.
The first thing I had Bill do was call up the technician. Problems with the Windows XP install wasn’t really the field I had been called to deal with and though I thought I could fix the problem somehow, as a general rule I try not to mess with the work of other people.
The technician didn’t have any helpful advice for Bill. He said Dell must have sent a bad hard drive image. We could either call up Dell tech support or else try to install windows XP from the CD we had. The two options didn’t leave us with much choice. Anyone who has gone through tech support knows that it is a form of inhumane torture that ought to be outlawed. We could either wait on the telephone for an hour or longer for someone to possibly be absolutely no help at all, or else I could install Windows XP for myself. There wasn’t much question which option would be chosen.
Installing Windows XP didn’t go easy. The drive image had only halfway finished installing itself but I thought to save time by just choosing the repair/upgrade option from the Windows XP CD. Well, that choked out only half finished and then ever afterward, in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom, it wouldn’t allow me to switch to a fresh install. Instead, it always picked back up on the doomed upgrade/repair. I wasn’t whipped yet, but by that time it was running late so I had to continue the battle the next day.
Windows XP had pretty well locked up the hard drive on itself. I couldn’t do a clean install because it would always pick up on the corrupted install and then hang. And restart would bring me back to the same position. I decided drastic measures were required. Coming back the second day I reinstalled the old hard drive and daisy-chained the new hard drive as a slave device. From the old hard drive I completely reformatted the new hard drive. Then I uninstalled the old hard drive and reinstalled the new hard drive. All this while Bill is sitting and watching me tear out the guts of his computer, plugging and unplugging cables and switching jumpers like some form of computer open heart surgery.
With the new hard drive now completely erased I stuck in the Windows XP CD and went through a (thankfully) trouble free install. At this point I could finally do what I had come to do–that is, put all of Bill and Jean’s personal data onto their new drive. While the old drive had been temporarily reinstalled I had copied their personal information onto a flash card that I had brought. This made copying the data back onto their new hard drive very simple. The actual thing I had been called to do was simple, just like I thought. But getting to that point was a major headache.
This story ends happily because both Bill and Jean were very glad to have their computer running again. Once the computer was indeed working Bill confessed that he hadn’t been sure the thing could be fixed. I suppose after all the dire warning messages, computer hangs, and sights of the insides of his computer hanging out it was quite natural to think the thing was doomed. I was pleased to be able to surprise him in a nice way.
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