If there’s no flour for bread, make biscuits…

Revised - per valid, reasonable request - from blog posted 6/13/2008; please use and/or quote this version. Thanks, Sherry, ChezSherry:

So how, you may ask, have we spent our time since mid-May? And why, for that matter, didn’t we acknowledge the earthquake in China, Memorial Day in the USA, or Barak Obama’s nomination? An enormous ongoing loss, a reminder of personal loss, and the greatest cause for hope in my lifetime. They all went by without a murmur from the Trailing Edge. Now that’s trailing for you!

If you haven’t asked yourselves those questions, continuing to read this is optional – as it ever is, was, and shall be, of course...

But enough about you; this is about me.

I have been doing battle (interesting how so many of our metaphors are war-related, isn’t it? Join our soon-to-be-posted “War on Violence” campaign…). Battle has been joined with those well trained, well-intentioned voices in the ether(net) available to help us 24/7 with our electronic difficulties.

It started simply enough: we lost our electrical power and our internet services on Thursday, May 22, because of tornado-strength winds. We were so lucky not to lose more as a tornado that passed within 20 or 30 miles (30-50 km.) of us. So lucky to only watch the enormous, black cloud bank as it blew past less than 5 miles (8 km.) away in a few, frighteningly short minutes. So lucky that losing electrical services was the least we could do.

After our power was restored – but not our internet service – we called the help line, waited through the recording assuring us we could get faster service at www.helpful-service-providers.com, punched all the right buttons (mostly), said all the right words (several times), and got to an actual person. She was very nice. She said nicely that our service was indeed still interrupted by the tornado. We were so lucky after all that it seemed churlish to complain when the she asked us, helpfully, if there was any other help she could provide. Upon hearing that there was not, she reminded us sweetly that we could get service quicker and more easily just by going to www.helpful-service-providers.com.

Yes. Well. So lucky, all the same.

After we saw by the green light on our heretofore trusty modem that our internet service was restored, we tried to get on-line. “Server not available,” reported our trusty Windows browser.

We waited.

Friday morning dawned with our trusty modem cheerfully flashing its green Internet light. We mis-trusted it. Rightly so. We pressed its reset button. Once resot, light green, browser at the ready, we clicked. “Server not available,” replied the browser. We took away the modem’s power. We rebooted the computer. “Server not available,” stated the browser, the modem flashing its green internet light. Mockingly.

We did the help line tango again, got our helpful “go online” suggestions, and spoke to another nice person. She explained that while our modem could connect to the network, the internet server was down. It would be restored in two to 24 hours, she said helpfully, so we should check periodically throughout the day. And we should provide our email address so we could comment on her help. We tried unsuccessfully to keep her from adding “msn.com” to the end of our email address, and listened politely to her reminder that we could get really fast help at www.helpful-service-providers.com.

After lots of fun interaction with the “Server not available” module on our browser, we greeted a new day. Within the predicted 24 hours, give or take 4 hours for building our character, the server became available. Yay! While hopeful, we still couldn’t get on the internet. We called our trusty hot-line, executed the now-familiar dance, got to a person, and in mere hours reestablished internet connectivity on both the desktop and the laptop. We were so happy to have internet service that we didn’t even comment when the helpful person sweetly told us that if we encountered this problem in future, we could go to www.helpful-service-providers.com.

These kindly folks are so well trained.

We used our internet and tended to our garden, literally and figuratively. We began to contemplate a world in which we in the United States of America can finally, maybe, hope to get over our pre-Civil-War greed and post-Civil-War Reconstruction and see people when we look at people.

We developed a false sense of security.

One day, we left the house to run errands, being among the shrinking number of folks on this planet who can buy food whenever we like. We returned through the wind to a powerless home. We understood the feeling.

Once the power and internet were restored, we did some actual paid work, weeded our garden, and turned to maintenance of our electronic garden. Our new handheld device was not playing well with our desktop devices.

We had a new one-sided conversation with our desktop.
“! Windows – System Error
“There is an IP address conflict with another system on the network”
said the hidden icons at the bottom of our screen and refused to explain further.

Knowing what would happen if we telephoned our helpful 24/7 handheld device and cell phone service provider folks, we went online. The following exchange occurred:

Ourcellphoneservice.com: Enter your device description
Poor user: Click on handheld, find and select our handheld device.
Ourcellphoneservice.com: Enter your question
Poor user: Find list of service needs and click on “e-mail.”
Ourcellphoneservice.com: Enter your device description
Poor user: Click on handheld, find and select our handheld device.
Ourcellphoneservice.com: Enter your question
Poor user: Find list of service needs and click on “e-mail.”

We repeated this exchange from several start points on ourcellphoneservice.com.

Having now established that Poor User has met one of the criteria for insanity – repeatedly performing the same actions, getting the same results, and expecting different results – we stopped and moved on to the next cycle.

We called 1-800-ourcellphoneservice for 24/7 help. We listened to the friendly advice to go to myourcellphoneservice.com. Forearmed, we danced through the phone system to a person. He was very helpful and understanding. His accent was almost incomprehensible because he was not from our country. He was from Texas.

But he was happy to repeat himself, and we got along nicely. We didn’t solve the problem, but we did get logged into ourmycellphoneprovider.com. Of course, our computer wouldn’t display anything but the login screen where we entered our brand new password. Repeatedly. Once our helpful person made us understand that he could see we were logged in already, we stopped demonstrating our insanity in that way. He tried to talk us through setting up email on our handheld device. We worked through our language barrier and established that if the handheld is unplugged from the computer or the Wi-fi connection is deactivated there is no service on the handheld device. (We already knew that actual cell service was only possible if one went outside and stood in the county road, but our helper didn’t.) We tried, but in our cell-towerless neighborhood the signal wasn’t strong enough to connect to the internet, no matter what risky behavior we undertook.

After following various other instructions, we got our handheld device to the point that it would do even less than before, even when re-Wi-fi’ed. Without, of course, setting up email. Our help person had a suggestion: we should drive to the cell phone service provider nearest us and they’d help us restore the menu options we need and add email service, for which he assured we are already paying. Because he understood our frustration, repeatedly, our helpful trouble-shooter offered us 50 free minutes. When we pointed out that we couldn’t currently use our cell phone’s existing minutes, he understood our frustration and awarded us 50 free minutes.

After a few more attempts at fixing things, which he did at our request because they hadn’t worked so well the first time, we agreed to stop repeating this activity. Our helpful person said once again that he understood our frustration at not getting either the handheld device or myourcellphoneservice.com to work. He forbore reminders about our free minutes and asked if there was anything else he could do for us today. We thought that he had done enough. Before wishing us a great day, he reminded us that we could get fast, easy service at www.myourcellphoneservice.com.

I recounted these woes to my husband.

“If there’s no flour for bread, make pancakes,” he said.

So, being – as has previously been established – insane, I waited a day before trying again. Oddly enough, the login to myourcellphoneservice.com worked, and the first attempt to select help with email setup on the selected handheld device yielded a new result! It was:

“It appears that the page you have requested no longer exists. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

And the hidden icons added,
“! Windows – System Error
“There is an IP address conflict with another system on the network”

I am not going to telephone anyone.
I am not going to go anywhere else on the internet.
I am going to stay home (ChezSherry) and make pancakes.
Or maybe biscuits.