Computer Hell

It started one morning when my daily e mail messages didn’t appear in Outlook. I quickly checked my I Phone. E mails were coming to my smart phone but not to my laptop. After repeated attempts at sending/receiving in Outlook I discovered an error message, 0x800CCCIA. When I googled the error message, Yahoo appeared instead. As I entered the search terms in the box a short video clip, constantly repeating, of a large woman throwing me a kiss appeared on the screen. Something is terribly wrong I thought.

But I did complete the search for the error message. I was provided an elaborate set of instructions explaining how and where to go to repair the error. I was deep into a long list of steps when it directed me to click Tools, then Settings, then a tab that said “Advanced.” I thought to myself “I have no business being in an advanced area.”

There was a time, when I was working, that I wouldn’t have gone this far. I would have looked at the error message on my screen, called Tracee, and said “Would you come in here? I have a problem.” God, what a blessing it is to have smart people working with you. Now I have no one. It’s only me. Bravely, I pushed on. This kind of stuff makes me nervous.
Turns out I was right to be nervous. When I clicked the advance tab a bunch of stuff appeared that looked almost foreign. I went back to the step by step directions.

• Uncheck the box that requires encrypted connection SSL.
• For Outgoing change the port to 587
• Select TSL in the Drop Down Box
• Click OK-Next-Finish

I did all that. I went back to Outlook, hit Send/Receive and got the same error message. It didn’t work. I was not receiving e mail. To make matters worse, I had no contacts, no e mail addresses, nada, zip. I had over 500 contacts accumulated over the years. I was panicked at the thought of losing them. For example I had lost all of you. My family was in there. They were still in my phone, but I had to get them back to Outlook. That’s where I did my real communicating. But I remembered what Tracee often said. “It’s usually there someplace. It’s rare that things are really lost, you just can’t see them.” I was trying to stay calm. They were, after all, still in my phone.

I like my I phone, but I love my computer. My computer is where I really work. I mean, I’m a two thumbed texter, and I can go fairly fast, but I’m a ten finger typist. I took personal typing as a junior in High School and have been typing ever since. If you saw my handwriting you would know why. I was hardly ever without a portable Royal typewriter. I got faster while working as an ad taker in college at the Pantagraph, the newspaper in Bloomington. I sat alone in the big classified office, after hours, at a typewriter with headphones connected to a telephone and listened as people described things they wished to sell. I simply stared ahead and typed what I heard, putting it into an order suitable for an ad in the paper. Very low level writing but writing all the same. And lots of typing.

Now when I think of words my fingers just tap them out. I don’t really consider what my fingers are doing. That must be what it’s like for accomplished pianists; they hear or imagine notes in their head and their fingers hit the keys that produce those sounds without thinking. That’s what writing on a keyboard is like for me. Whatever happened to my computer didn’t affect Microsoft Word. Nothing prevented me from writing. But how could I send what I wrote to those of you who read it without Outlook? I went back to the instructions. I followed them again. I failed to fix it again. I tried some different things. I got different error messages. It was apparent I needed help. I called Tracee anyway. Thankfully, she took my call. She certainly didn’t have to. I explained my problem briefly and then got to the real purpose of my call.

“Tracee, could I pay you to look at this laptop and fix this deal?” Tracee is a whiz. She could probably fix it in a minute.

“I can look at it, and you can pay me, but that’s really not necessary. Call your ISP?”

“What’s that?”

“Internet Service Provider. That’s their job, to get those messages to you, and they specify how your computer needs to be set up to get them. Put them on the spot. I bet they can help you fix it. You can do this Dave, really.”

I was not convinced. But I thanked her profusely nonetheless and tried to figure out who my ISP was. ATT&T I guessed. They give us everything: phones, TV, Internet, maybe more. My wife takes care of that stuff. I found a number on line and called. It wasn’t easy. I got into one of those automated phone systems that uses voice recognition. I always find myself yelling into the phone with those things. At some point it looped back to the beginning. I was just trying to get a real person. Anyone really. Finally I did. It was a man with a heavy accent.

“Hello, this is Jake. May I help you?” He didn’t sound like a Jake.

“Where are you Jake?”

“Bangalore, India.”

I described my problem. After only a short while his accent was understandable. He wanted to take control of my computer remotely. I was glad to let him do so. As he talked me through the commands I needed to give my computer over to him he asked who handled my e mail function

“Outlook. Microsoft Outlook.”

“No, that is just a software application. What is your mail extension. SBCglobal.net?”

“No. I use g mail.”

“That’s a Google product. We don’t support Google products.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it is very possible that ATT&T is delivering your e mail messages to Google and Google is not transferring them to your Outlook properly or your Microsoft product, Outlook, is not receiving them from Google as it should. If you were using an ATT&T e mail service, we can support that easily. However, you are our customer and I will do what I can to get your working again. But Google can be difficult.”

At that point the cursor began moving over the screen by itself. Actually, it was being moved by Jake in Bangalore. Amazing. He went to my actual g mail account. I never used it. It was there all the time, working in the background, but I only used Outlook. Lots of things are not as they appear with computers.

“Does your computer always operate this slowly Sir?”

“Uh…yeah. It has lately anyway. I’m on wireless from the house, and I’m in a shack some distance away.”

Jake wasn’t very interested the details. “See Mr. McClure, here are today’s e mail messages. You can use this account if you like. ATT&T has delivered them as they should. However they are not being forwarded to Outlook.”

“Can you fix that?” He had reached the same error message I had nearly an hour ago.

“I will most certainly try sir, you are our customer, but I can make no promises. Please be patient.”

Jake talked as he worked. On another screen he was searching for instructions. Soon, much quicker than I, he was in the advanced area, reading to himself the same set of instructions I had previously read.

“I've done this already Jake.”

“Please be patient Mr. McClure.”

Jake did everything I did and much more. He tried different things. He changed the port numbers. He used different options in the drop down box. As he did he talked, sort of to me, sort of to himself.

"I’m trying these things just based on past experience” he said. He was blindingly fast. But in the end unsuccessful.

“I’m very sorry Mr. McClure but as you can see nothing I have tried has worked, and I believe I may have exhausted all the options. You must have a more serious problem. But as I said previously, we do not typically support Google products. I suggest you call them. I’ll give you a number.”

“Thanks Jake, you’ve been helpful. I hope things go well for you there in Bangalore.” I would never know his real name. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Jake.

I picture Google’s office, in Mountain View, California, as sort of a digital Mecca: bright colors, lots of light, full of beautiful people, all young, thin, bright and clean. There would be comfortable work spaces, no paper, and sleek desks with the best and latest computers. Staff would be relaxed, helpful, courteous and so smart. So very smart to have created such an empire and made so much money. That is how I pictured it. I couldn’t wait to talk to someone there, who would surely be able to fix my problem right away.

I never broke through. I called three different numbers and encountered beautiful soothing recorded voices. They led me gently through voice menus and spoken prompts. It was soothing. But I could never connect with a real person. I was caught in a maze of loops that repeated themselves and never offered an option of pushing a number on my phone and conversing with an actual human being. I gave up and called Microsoft.

At the other end of the Microsoft number was a Payal Chopra in New Delhi India. It was at least possible that he was using his real name. He asked how he could help. Soon he had taken over my computer as Jake did. But Payal went further. Commenting on the slowness of my computer he did some quick diagnostics, my computer screen flashing from one mysterious screen to another, and determined I had a serious virus. He suggested I download a “spybot” virus detection program, follow their directions, and call back. It was more than I bargained for. But I took a deep breath and did it.

Who knows where these digital afflictions come from? And why? Why mess with a retired man’s laptop in a shack in Illinois? What do they gain, the people who launch these digital diseases, from infecting me? What is the point really?

Like so much concerning computers and this world we live in that feels so new and strange, we simply don’t know. I slowly and cautiously let the virus protection program identify the bad stuff, whatever and where ever it was in my system, and then deleted the files it suggested. I closed a bunch of stuff running in the background (I hardly know what I’m saying now) and when it was all done I called Microsoft back.

This time I talked with Anurag Singh. Anurag was a quiet man, soft spoken, and very patient. He methodically walked me through the problem of my still blank Outlook program, explaining, when I could understand, and simply directing me to do things when I couldn’t. In the end, he fixed the connection between my g mail account and Outlook by deleting and reinstalling one of them or the other. He told me that the next step would be the most time intensive.

“Mr. McClure you must now download your g mail data into Outlook. Unfortunately it must come over in its entirety. And by the looks of things here, you have a very large amount of data. Lots of messages. Did you not delete any messages from your g mail account?”

“I deleted messages in Outlook. I only kept a month’s worth of everything.”

“But they remained in g mail. It appears they go back to sometime in 2010. In order to get your current messages, and your address book, you must import all that data. And given the slowness of your connection, I am afraid this will take a considerable period of time.”

Anurag’s English was very good. He explained things very patiently and very well. I asked him

“Do you grow tired of helping computer illiterate Americans, especially old ones like me?”

“Not at all Mr. McClure. We are here to help you.”

“How long have you done this?”

“I am working now in my fifth year.”

I think that if the situation were reversed, if I were tasked with talking over the phone to relatively ignorant Indian computer users, in the middle of the night, who knew little or nothing about how the expensive machine they owned functioned, and were so dense in understanding how to use it and fix it, I might go absolutely nuts. I’m quite sure I could never be as kind and patient as the people I encountered on the phone.

“Well you’re good at what you do.”

“Thank you sir.”

Long story short, I spent hours and hours downloading and deleting newly arrived e mails that appeared in my Outlook program. It was like reliving my life of digital communication. It was eye opening. Why, in God’s name, did I spend so much time and energy on the things representing in those e mails? Scores and scores of drivel and nonsense flashed across the screen representing countless hours of attention and thought on my part. It made me want to unsubscribe from damn near everything, turn off all but the most important sources of information. It was a disturbing display of crap. And it didn’t even include Face Book, which is quite possibly the king of crap.

I called Microsoft back once more. Rishu Wahal looked over my computer one last time and declared it good. He advised me to keep my virus definitions up to date and to use more than one protection program. He talked about malware, bots, spyware, more I can’t remember. It’s a jungle out there.

But I got through it. Most importantly, my contacts reappeared, and along with them your e mail address. They were altered, but there. I spent a long time editing them, putting them back into a format to which I was familiar, alphabetizing them by first names, recreating my distribution lists, including this blog list. My daughter, whom I consulted with from time to time during this episode, sort of like a crisis counselor, asked me why I was doing it at all.

"Dad, you don’t need Outlook. Outlook is old. This is your chance to escape. Dump it. Use g mail, it’s just as good.”

“Honey, you don’t understand. I’ve been using Outlook since it was invented. I know where all the buttons are. I know what they do when you click them. Outlook goes hand in glove with Word and Word is my daily friend. I feel comfortable inside those programs. It’s like driving a LeSabre.”

And so I survived. My thanks to everyone who helped; Tracee, my daughter Moe, Payal, Anurag, Rishu, and yes even Jake. Where would we old people be without smart young people across the globe guiding us through the world?

Mailing letters with stamps I’m afraid. Have a nice weekend.