Progress

Just a quick update- the shirts have shipped and should be here in a couple of days (yea!) and the computer/Norton problem is on the road to somewhere.

First the shirts- Gap sent an email last night saying they had been shipped. I double checked the address and they are coming to this very house. They even showed a refund on the card, so the Man In Manchester must have been so kind as to return the first set! A signature is required this time, so I'll have to stick around the house Thursday morning. That shouldn't be a problem. The UPS guy is quite nice. The previous occupants of this house get packages sent here all the time. The normal routine is for him to ring the bell and apologize for interrupting. He then says, "I know this isn't you, but I have to ask anyway. Is this the right address?" I always answer, "Nope. That person doesn't live here." He says, "Thanks, have a great day." and runs back out to his truck. I think it will really throw off his game to have a package come that actually belongs here.

As for the computer- we finally called Dell for help and they walked me through a PC Restore. Basically we wiped out everything and started over. This was a necessary step because the Norton"helpers" had pretty much made every program that required input from a Microsoft program inoperable. That would be pretty much everything was inoperable. The computer is now supposedly back to the state it was in when it arrived at our doorstep last winter. The Norton icon even came back up. The computer consultant (a wonderful woman who actually spoke to me on the phone! No live chat this time!) says that if the icon is there, the program should be working. I didn't have time to get everything set up again today, so I'm reserving my right to cheer until then. If not, we have the disk in the box and we'll reinstall it. Luckily, life has been so crazy since Christmas that all we really had on the laptop (and still needed) were pictures and family history info. Both of those items were backed up other places, so I'm all ready to try again! The only real issue I can foresee is that we password protected the wireless internet and I'm not sure where the password and info is. If that was wiped out, too, we may be facing a different frustration until we can get that all figured out. If we can't, it won't matter so much if the Norton works or not. The main source of viruses will be unavailable. I guess you could look at that as a silver lining.

So, things are looking up- at least with respect to shirts and computers. Some other aspect of life may take a down turn tomorrow, but tonight I'm going to bed with my thought load just a little lighter.

Norton Internet Security, round 2

I just thought I'd update everyone on our Norton Internet Security experience (see post from Sept.1). It's been a bit frustrating. Greg was on the computer with them until about midnight Monday night. That makes nearly 12 hours. They couldn't figure out what was wrong, so they downloaded a bunch of error logs, gave Greg a "calling card" (a one time "direct link" back to the help line), and said to contact them in 48 hours. Well, neither of us wanted to be contacting anyone at midnight on Wednesday night. So, Greg used the "calling card" on Thursday evening at 10:05 p.m. -thinking that it would be a very short/quick/brief conversation resulting in a solution.

When you activiate the "calling card" a little window opens on the computer that says you've logged in and someone will be with you shortly. "Shortly" being in comparison to the creation of the universe, not as in "just-a-minute". Greg or I sat within visual range of the computer until 12:30 am (ok, Greg was within sight at 12:30, but looking at the inside of his eyelids!) when we gave up and went to bed. Since the "calling card" is a one-time shot, we left the computer on and connected to Norton. All day Friday I would check on it. Greg emailed the director who did not reply. They have both our phone number and email address. Greg was in AZ last night. I went to bed about 11:30 and still we were being asked to wait and someone would be with us "shortly".

I got up this morning to find that Guru Prasad (not sure if Guru is a name or a title!) had joined our "conversation" at 1:31 am (27 hours and 25 minutes AFTER we had started said "conversation"). Amazingly, no one was there to converse. He tried to access some files, but Windows firewalls kicked in and wouldn't give him access. Since the humans on our end of the "conversation" had foolishly gone to bed, Guru exited the "conversation" at 1:37 am without trying an email or phone contact. At 8:35 am the "calling card" expired and we had already left for soccer by then. Ahhh! I do not like online chats!!! They are not helpful. Now, we get to start all over again. It's a good thing these people are not within driving distance, because I would be very tempted to have a face-to-face "conversation".

Ok. I've vented. I keep trying to find a silver lining in all of this. Hasn't happened, yet. Maybe one will present itself later. We'll keep you posted.