Sheila's LiveJournal

Back to the computer shop tomorrow. Grrr. The refurbished machine shows some of the signs of the old one, so I now have no idea where the problem lies. But I know one thing: I'm getting mighty tired of this.

I managed with great difficulty to do some revision work on a story for an anthology due soon (like having to hold down the F3 stop instead of being able to use "save". And it still required shutting off the power in order to exit the program. Sigh.

The guys at the shop who keep my computer running finally gave up. They switched the (new) hard drive -- which we'd loaded with all my programs and links before we knew the Old Grey Dell she ain't what she used to be -- to a refurbished IBM. They didn't charge me for it. I'm going to use it only for writing and keep the laptop for surfing the web. Except for emergencies on one or other of them, of course. Shouldn't be any on the desktop for a while now. Keeping my fingers crossed! I'm so far behind in my writing, I can't afford any more downtime.

I haven't posted lately because I'm having to use the laptop and I don't like working at length on it. But the desktop has been in the shop for repairs twice in the last two weeks, and if today's performance is anything to go by, it'll be going back on Monday.

First of all, it suddenly died -- hard drive collapsed. Luckily I had all my writing files saved on a thumb drive -- thanks to my granddaughter's good advice (and nagging!) The hard drive was replaced in good time and I got the computer back, only to have it start freezing up in the middle of work after a few minutes. I couldn't even turn it off without turning off the power. So back it went, and four days later they told me they'd worked on the mother board and had kept it for a couple extra days to test it out. Five minutes after I got it hooked back up at home and logged on, it started doing the same thing.

Time for a new one? I didn't think it was that old. I've forgotten exactly when I got it, but I was still teaching -- and I've been retired for almost five years. I don't really have the extra money to replace it right now.

Do you think Obama will send me a bail-out package?

I finally won the battle with Symantec which wasn't happy to refund my money when I determined the product (Norton antivirus) wasn't working smoothly on my computer -- it was causing a lot of problems. It took months of phone calls and a couple of letters to Symantec's CEO, and finally a letter to the Better Business Bureau of Silicon Valley to shake loose my refund. The stupid thing is, the woman I spoke to about this at first agreed I was within my rights to ask for a refund. Then she tried for half an hour to thwart me, throwing up all sorts of "problems" and outright lying at one point. The fight was over a measly $50, but the principal was more valuable, and Symantec gave in. Since then, I've had three phone calls and four emails from them, all trying to smooth things over, but I'm glad to be OUT!