Mrs. Linklater, Computer Geek

Answer:  English. I can use it to speak to the techs. Well, most of them anyway. Question:  Mrs. Linklater, what courses did you take in college that helped you install your new video card?

Someone has been kind enough to ask if Mrs. Linklater ever got the new video card installed.

Well, yes she did, thank you very much.  It only took two more calls to Gateway and one call to the Radeon folks who actually make the video card.

The computer kept booting in Safe Mode after Mrs. Linklater had supposedly [finally] installed it. "Aren't I supposed to launch some stuff through this CD they sent me?"  [Like the drivers?]  No, you have already done that.

Apparently not, Gateway breath.

The tech at Radeon said it was booting in safe mode because the drivers had not been installed.  Is there an echo in here?  "Just put the CD in and click on Install."  

Now Mrs. Linklater can see again!!!!!!!!!!!!

But Murphy's Law was in force last week.  What could go wrong went wrong.

Mrs. Linklater's 2004 Norton Disk Doctor and Speed Disk Utilities were suddenly showing errors that didn't exist, then restarting hundreds of times and not finishing.  

So she said screw you in so many words and decided to switch to her Windows ScanDisk and Defrag. But they had stopped working entirely. Neither one had any visible signs of life.

Until Mrs. Linklater completely uninstalled her 2004 Norton Personal Firewall. And voila! everything was working again. 

So, she did a clean boot and re-installed the firewall.  Like none of the other applications would notice. They noticed.

All the utilities crapped out again. 

Then AOL corrupted and asked for the CD to be inserted to fix itself.  Where the heck is that thing? So Mrs. Linklater trudged over to COMP USA to get a new AOL CD.

While she was there she heard these comforting words from the tech guy about her Norton problem -- "Oh, yeah, Norton 2004 wasn't one of their best efforts, I'm afraid."

He did suggest only installing the firewall and virus protection and then cherry pick any utilities, if necessary.

The AOL issue fixed fairly quickly.  Although, in a separate problem, every time Mrs. Linklater clicks on the offer to download or get a CD for all the upgraded gadgets and gizmos for 9.0, AOL freezes and she has to re-boot. 

Mrs. Linklater will put on her computer tech hat again this evening. 

But first she is going to party at the racetrack. Her maiden voyage to the world of horseracing. There's a really nice track here -- only twenty minutes away, but she's never been.

She is invited to a birthday party and the hosts have taken over a VIP section.  Which means wearing a hat that doesn't have "Cubs" on it.

And shoes that don't leave treadmarks.