Wednesday, June 19, 2002. Entry #166

Yesterday was not my day to work with computers.

Right near the end of my shift, my laptop suddenly stopped being able to connect to the Internet. No one else around me was having any problems whatsoever, just me.

The odd thing was I could connect to the office network just fine. For those of you not savvy on Internet connectivity and office networks, that's really weird. A survey of my internal settings showed everything on my end was just fine. And none of my Internet software (browsers, FTP clients, whatever) would connect.

I called our Mac consultant, who said I had done pretty much everything I could do on my end, and now I would have to talk to our IT department.

The IT ninjas know absolutely nothing about Macintosh computers. The very mention of a Mac makes them all panicky and stuff.

I called them up and explained the problem. No, there was nothing wrong with the network, they said. It would have to be something wrong with my laptop and, "We don't know anything about Mac's, sowecan'thelpyougoodbye."

I ended up taking my laptop home for the night and tried it on my net connection there, where it worked just fine (of course).

This morning, I used this new data to force the ninjas to accept the fact that something was really wrong, and they bustled off into their dark cave to have a look. Eventually they admitted that they had just added new IP addresses to the network and I had just happened to be assigned one. And, lo and behold, something was wrong with that IP address, preventing me from accessing the Internet.

Sigh.

They coughed up an old IP, and everything's been fine since. That isn't the end of my woes, of course.

For some reason, my home computer has stopped being able to read my DVD-ROM drive. It started a couple days ago, and has rapidly progresses to the point where it will either refuse to acknowledge there is a disc in the drive (if I'm lucky) or hang the entire system until I'm forced to manually reboot it.

The last software I installed was some expansion packs for The Sims that Connie loaned us a couple weeks back. Everything has been fine since then, up until the last couple days. The only thing I can think of was that I tried to access a CD that Connie had burned a bunch of downloaded Sims extras on. I was never able to actually read the disc, and that was the first time I remember the new problem happening. I assumed it was something wrong with the disc, but I have no idea if it could have screwed up my drive as well.

Anyway, I busied myself all last night with going through the various help files on Dell's support site in an effort to fix the problem while avoiding Tech Support Hell. No luck. I reinstalled the drivers, tried their DVD-ROM diagnostic program, booted and rebooted the system multiple times...and finally I broke down and just called them.

A half hour later I got through to a lady who informed me I had phoned the American support line and she couldn't help me. Another half hour passed on the Canadian line before Snotty Canadian Tech Girl deigned to speak with me.

After first being forced to tunnel through my file cabinet for my old Medicine Hat address (as she refused to service me without my proving my identity through reciting the address of where I was when I bought the thing), I told her the whole deal.

"You have to reinstall the DVD software as well as the drivers," she said finally.

"Where do I find that?" I asked.

"On one of your install CDs."

I mentioned that I couldn't access any CDs because the DVD-ROM drive wasn't working right, and she informed me quite firmly that I had to install the software to make it work. How was I to install the software? I asked.

"Just put the CD into your drive, and it should auto-run," she said. Her tone of voice indicated she was preparing to say, "Call us back if that doesn't work."

I interrupted her spiel by yet another reminder that my DVD-ROM wasn't actually working, and then kept stalling her while I rebooted my machine to prove it to her.

I had just got it restarted and had tried the disc ("Nope!" I crowed triumphantly to Snotty Canadian Tech Girl. "It's locked up again!"), when the phone beeped. Someone on call waiting.

I normally would have ignored it, but I was nearly late to pick Lisa up and was hoping it was her. I quickly switched lines, told Lisa the problem, and zipped back. Damn! Snotty Canadian Tech Girl was gone! Either I had hit the wrong button and hung up on her, or she had taken the opportunity to bolt.

I went and picked Lisa up, and then spent another hour fussing with the machine. I got it working briefly at one point, but made the mistake of sticking that one burned CD back in the drive. Which is when I recalled that this might have been what started the problem in the first place.

Another hour of fussing to no avail, and I gave up. I'll be calling tech support again tonight.

Damn it all.

More pictures of Lisa and I, courtesy of ReasonablyClever.com!

One Year Ago Today: I was still on hiatus, but in 1963, the charter members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame were chosen.

Mom Rating: 2.5 out of 5. Mom's quite scared of computer breakdowns, but she's confident I'll get it fixed.

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Take me home, big fella