And so close to the end, too.

Morning

I woke up at 8:58 a.m.

Which is a problem because Ethan is supposed to be at school by 8:50, or 9:00 at the latest.

It takes about 10-12 minutes to get there.

Ethan, as one might expect, was also asleep.

Parents understand this as the “Murphy’s Law of Parenthood”: the days when you want to sleep in, the child wakes up an hour earlier than usual; the days when you need to get up early, the child will be in the deepest sound sleep of his/her life.

Others might say “Kids are Jerks.” Not me you understand, but others might.

I woke up Tracey who was also late for work — only to be told that she didn’t have to work today (oops), and Ethan, who got right up and started getting ready for school.

I tossed a waffle into the toaster for Ethan, grabbed my electric razor, scribbled a note to Ethan’s teacher, and dressed as quickly as I could.

We were out the door in less than 10 minutes.

Drop Off

Usually when I drop Ethan off at school, there are a long row of SUVs, mini-vans, and other cars dropping their kids off. There’s a police officer directing traffic. There’s a “buzz” in the “air”.

When you’re an hour late, it’s The Dead Zone. I could have been driving 3 Hummers and still had room for passing bicycles.

Ethan gave me a hug and kiss, grabbed his backpack and his “I’m Late Because Dad Overslept” note, and ran to the door. I watched him open the door, wave, and step inside the school.

Well at least that’s ove–Wait, what did you say?

I arrived at the office and joked with a couple of the other guys that it sure was a lot easier dropping Ethan off at school when we were an hour late.

“An hour?” one of them said “There isn’t a one-hour delay today, there’s a two hour delay.”

You know in those movies when they show one person continuing to move while everyone else seems to freeze in place.

That’s pretty much what happened to me, as the following thoughts went through my head:

“OH MY GOD, I DROPPED HIM OFF AT SCHOOL WHEN THERE IS NO SCHOOL FOR ANOTHER HOUR!”

As a parent, there aren’t much bigger “fails” than that.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, THAT’S why there were no cars there, it wasn’t because we were late, it’s because we were an hour early!!!”

“Wait, ok, I saw him go inside though, so someone must be there. Right? Well, maybe. Maybe his teacher isn’t there. Maybe the only one there is the janitor who unlocked the building. He could be just wandering around the school not knowing what is going on! Oh crap, I’ve got to get over there right now and find out what’s going on, the poor kid, he must be…”

“No, no,” said one of the other guys, who were suddenly able to move and talk again, “It’s only the county schools that have a delay. The city schools started at the regular time.”

“SAY WHAT?”

Our school system is divided up into city schools and county schools. The county schools tend to have a lot of kids who live “way out” and have to travel over less-than-ideal roads. If there’s ice, they will often delay school to avoid stuck school buses.

So, as it turned out after my seemed-like-forever momentary prepare-for-cardiac-arrest, I’m just a lousy parent for not getting my kid to school on time, and not a truly awful, despicable, loathsomely bad idiot who ought to be arrested for criminal stupidity.

And I went and signed up for email and text message alerts for when school is canceled for the city schools.

(I threw in an extra just in case you already knew one of the other ones.)

() While we were home on Spring break in April, I told Mom that I was going to propose in September and get married in June. A few weeks later, when I was back at college, Mom called early on a Saturday morning (I have no idea what time it was in Real People Time, but in College Student Time it was *early).

Me (mostly asleep): “Uh… Hello…?” Mom: “Hi hon. Ellen [mom’s longtime friend] and I were talking at the IGA [grocery store] and we both agreed that you can’t expect her to plan a June wedding during her last year of college if you’re not going to propose until September. I called the chapel and they only have one timeslot left for the day you want to get married, so I’ve reserved that for you.” Me: “Uh… Ok.”

I don’t remember if there was anything else after that. I went back to sleep, woke up several hours later and thought “Wait, what?”

It seems to have worked out ok. We’ve been married 13 years so far.

Barack Obama’s campaign has an actual presence in our little neck of the woods, and I’ve been in communication with the local coordinator for awhile. I’ve been to a couple of events, worked on a letter to the editor about Obama not being a Muslim (and otherwise in favor of truth-telling), and today I made some phone calls.

I had no idea what to prepare, so I tried not to imagine what it would be like.

Which worked fine right up until the time when I started imagining what it would be like:

Setting

Image: A roomful of people making calls, “generating buzz” and being part of the process of making the world a better place by helping to get someone elected who seems to have some new, better, different ideas and ways of doing things.

Reality: there were 3 of us. Two guys who are working there pretty much full-time, and me. The office was covered in hastily hung political ads, with some visual aids to help you remember what you were supposed to do.

Mission

Image: Engaging in thoughtful conversation about the two candidates and hopefully persuading someone who Obama is the better candidate.

Reality: Handed a script which basically said “Are you: 1) Supporting Obama, 2) Leaning Towards Obama, 3) Undecided, 4) Leaning Towards McCain, 5) Supporting McCain?” and then went from there, with a couple sample ideas of how to engage in conversation.

(So much for my thoughts about push-polling some anti-McCain questions: “How would you feel if you knew that McCain could only be kept alive by drinking placenta smoothies and soaking for two hours in the blood of freshly killed leggy blonde virgins?”)

The Actual Calls

Image: some for, some against, some undecided. Some upset that they are being interrupted. Some blasting off as to why Obama will ruin the country because he’s a Muslim who eats Baptist babies, some questioning how in the world McCain can have any level of support in the double digits.

Reality: I went through about 5 pages of phone numbers, and spoke to 3 actual people.

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. I spoke to more people than that, but most of them either told me that the person I was calling for was not home, didn’t live there anymore, or I had the complete wrong number.

Then there were the answering machines.

And one that sounded like a fax machine (SCREEE-CRRRR-ZZZZ!)

One of the calls went like this (names changed because I don’t remember the actual names):

Me: “Is Edward Scissorbutt available?”

Her: “Well, he’s out in the garage.” (Imagine a voice that sounds like the deepest stereotypical white southern not-rich person you can imagine.)

Me: (Thinking: “Does she mean his body is in the garage? Did he commit suicide by running the car with the door down? Or maybe she killed him and stuffed his body in the trunk. Note to self: you’ve been watching too much CSI.”)

Her: “Ya want me ta get ‘im?”

Me: “Um” (this is not in the script) “I could call back—”

Her: “I’ll get ‘im. He’s just in the garage messin’ around.”

Me: “Ok, thanks.”

Her (to him): “You got a phone call.”

Him: “Who is it?”

Her: “I ain’t got any idea.”

Him: “Well just give it here.”

(Sounds of phone being exchanged.)

Him: “Hello?”

Me: “Is this” (oh crap who is this supposed to be? Eyes dart down the call sheet) “Edward Scissorbut?”

Him: “Well yeah.” (Note: he didn’t sound all that happy. I’m not sure if it was with me or just life, but I was bracing myself.)

Me: “Hi, my name is Tim and I’m with the Obama Biden campaign here in Ohio.” (Oh crap I forgot the next part, eyes darting along script, wait, that’s not the script, that’s the call list. Panic PANIC PANIC SAY SOMETHING ANYTHING)

Me: “Are you still at 4328 Maplewood Rd?”

Him: “Naw I’m at 83921 State Road 8334 (some other city).”

Me: “Oh, um” (shit this isn’t on the script, because this isn’t what I’m supposed to be talking to him about, what the bleep do I say next?) “Have you, um, updated your voter information?”

Him: “Nah, I ain’t done that.”

Me: (OH! I’ve got a script for this part!) “Did you know Ohio recently changed their law allowing you to vote by mail or in person anytime after September 30th?”

Him: “No I didn’t know that.”

Me: “You can vote in person at the court house” (Oh crap he doesn’t live here anymore that’s probably not where he can vote shit shit shit) “OR I could send you a vote by mail form. Would you like me to send you the vote by mail form?”

Him: “Well sure!”

(I confirmed his new address. Then I realize I haven’t asked him who he’s going to vote for. I may just have offered to send a McCain supporter a voter registration form. If he wins Ohio by one vote it will be my fault!)

Me: “So, can I ask if you’ve decided to support Senator Obama?”

Him: “Well hell yeah, I’m a Democrat.”

Me: (Whew. Ok, get out before you blow this.) “Well that’s great, I’m really excited about it. I’ll get that voter registration form to you as soon as possible. Thanks!”

Him: “Thanks buddy, good night.”

I realized then and there that I should stand up and walk out of the building, never to return. Not because I had done so poorly (which I had) but because it’s doubtful I’d ever feel better about a single call than I did right then. I helped someone vote who may not have been able to do so otherwise.

The Power.

But I knew I couldn’t do that.

I told Seth what had happened, and he told me to ring the bell.

“Oh wait,” he said, “I forgot to tell you about the bell! Whenever you get an undecided to sway towards Obama or a McCain supporter to support Obama instead, or get someone registered, you get to ring the bell.”

Me, thinking to myself: “Oh this is so juvenile. Really? A bell?”

Him: “Go ahead. Ring the bell.”

I sighed internally and rang the bell.

Dude, I’m not kidding, I felt like the angel who got his wings.

I realize it’s just a dumb psychological trick that has absolutely no redeeming value or meaning, but wow, I totally want a bell on my desk and every time I accomplish something, I’m going to ring the bell. Maybe I’ll hook it to a food dispenser and a pellet will come out or something.

I kept making calls.

And kept getting nowhere.

I was calling people who are defined as “Sporadic Democrats” which is to say that they don’t often vote, but when they do, they vote Democrat, or tend to.

Seth also explained that these are often people who move around a lot, which is why I was getting a lot of wrong numbers.

Or answering machines.

Now we were calling between 5:30-6:30 so it’s entirely possible that a lot of them just weren’t home from work or maybe they work second shift or two jobs. But I only managed to track down 3-4 of the actual people I was looking for.

One said that she and her husband were Democrats but undecided. They didn’t have any questions for me about Obama, they had watched a lot of stuff already, but were waiting for the debates.

Another said he was a Democrat and would never vote for McCain, but wouldn’t say that he was going to vote for Obama either. When I asked if he had any questions I could answer, he said: “Well, if you could tell me for sure he’s not a Muslim…”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Me: “Well, I can. He’s not a Muslim, he’s attended a Christian church for a number of years—”

Him: “Well I’ve heard both stories on the Internet.”

Me: “—attended a Christian church.”

Him: “Well I’m sure not going to vote for McCain.”

Me: “Ok, well I hope that we can count on your vote for Obama. Good night!”

Him: “Goodnight”

Last Call

I wanted one more ring of that bell. So I kept on going. I was tired and frustrated and hungry and tired but I kept on calling.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Disconnected.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Wrong number.

Answering Machine.

Answering Machine.

Finally I got a woman, she identified herself as the woman I was looking for.

Me: “Hi, my name is Tim and I’m with the Obama Biden campaign here in Ohio.”

Her: (Click)

Well I can’t blame her. I hate getting calls at home too.

So that was it.

No more bell ringing. Left feeling kinda frustrated by the whole thing. I probably could have stayed longer but I was beyond tired and wasn’t up for any more.

But for at least one guy, it made a difference.

It’s a start.

We walked in the door and she said “Look at all the people!” It was mobbed. Right away someone asked if they could help, and I said “She’s thinking about buying an iPod.”

An iPod Specialist came over and gave her the whole song and dance (which eventually led to about $100 worth of accessories and an introduction to the Apple TV).

While we were there someone bought a Mac, and as she left, all of the employees applauded.

My friend turned to me with some kind of mixture of surprise and eye-rolling.

“It’’s like a cult,” she said, at least partly because she knew it would make me chafe.

“More like a family,” I replied, which only succeeded in causing more eye-rolling.

I went there to buy Lego Star Wars for the Mac. (For my son, of course.) I also bought a game controller. There was no info as to whether or not the game would work with the controller. “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t” was as much as they could tell me.

Oh, yeah, and they also told me once I opened the game, I couldn’t return it.

I bought it, but before I opened it I found a demo of the game online, downloaded it, and couldn’t find any way to make the controller work. I also found a Macworld review of Lego Star Wars II which mentioned that the second game worked with a game controller (implying, at least to me, that the first one did not).

So I planned to return it and buy the 2nd one instead. (For my son, of course.)

But it was around 6 p.m. and parking around the store is awful ($3.50/hr at the garage, and there are never any spots on the street) so we decided to go after dinner.

We had a lovely dinner, but it took awhile to find where we wanted to go (that’s a whole other story), get a table, etc. We left around 8:45 p.m. I checked the GPS and it said we could be at the Apple Store at 9:02.

I called and explained what had happened, and they said that they’d wait since I was “almost there.” Well, of course the GPS can’t factor in red lights, a sudden rainstorm, and construction, so we finally got there around 9:07. There was someone inside the store looking out, waiting for me, the rain was pouring down, and my friend offered to run in and get it for me so we wouldn’t have to park.

She came out a few minutes later with a huge smile on her face.

“I told them I wasn’t going to buy it unless they clapped for me,” she said, looking every bit like a giddy teenager, “…. AND THEY DID!”

I laughed and told her she got about a $1,000 discount on the Apple Store Employee Applause.

“Felt kinda good,” she admitted as we drove off.

“Welcome to the family” I said only to myself.

First there was this, and now this:

A few weeks ago a group of us went out for my birthday (by the way, if your present hasn’t arrived, you still have time) to a local chain restaurant.

There were about 7 of us, including 2 kids. We had appetizers, soft drinks, and lunch.

We had brought a coupon for a free dessert with the purchase of an entrée which they had sent for my birthday.

5 adults had 5 meals.

No entrées.

According to the restaurant, only certain items were entrées.

Yeah, I thought that entrée meant “The thing that goes between the appetizer and dessert” too, but apparently it means “More than a sandwich or hamburger, roughly speaking about $4 more.”

Now you might think that five adult meals plus appetizers might let you give you a little leeway, but if you think that, you’re unfamiliar with corporate America. Local owners are most likely required to submit these coupons and the corresponding receipts before they get reimbursed. (I’m guessing here.)

This is not the first time this has happened.

So I wrote a letter. Yeah, I know, but I did anyway.

The thrust of my letter was:

1) “Entrée” to most people means the part of the meal between the appetizer and dessert.

2) None of the items marked “entrée” were all that interesting to me or anyone since not one of us ordered one.

3) If they wanted to keep people from exploiting the system, why not make it “Free if you spend at least $15” or something like that since I’ll often go and get an appetizer plus sandwich/hamburger (see #2).

I didn’t really expect anything except maybe a form letter response.

Then I mostly forgot about it.

Today I was sorting through the mail and found a letter from the manager of the local branch, apologizing for it and explaining that they did have some people who “worked the system” and she included 4 coupons for free…. entrées.

Shown (left to right):

iPhone MacBook Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Backup Drive Media Drive iTunes Drive Dell Monitor (1200x1600) Kensington Bluetooth Mouse ScanSnap 500m

Brother HL-2040 and Airport Express

I should probably go unpack my clothes now.

But it will die at some point in the future.

That’s what they do. That’s what happens.

(Note: although I talk about several Apple products and Mac software, this post really isn’t about Apple or Mac OS X. It’s about being prepared for the when not if of your hard drive dying.)

If you are a Mac user and are not using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner, you’re an idiot.

I know, because I stand among you as one of you.

Oh I have SuperDuper. I had even used it, as recently as a week before my hard drive died. Which places me in a pretty small group of people with actual working backups.

However, in the intervening week I downloaded about 100 pictures and several short videos from my wife’s digital camera after she and our son spent a week with a friend in Virginia Beach.

Say it with me: IDIOT.

Not that SuperDuper didn’t try to tell me. I have it scheduled to backup every night. Every night it would pop up and say “Hey, I tried to make the backup like you asked, but you didn’t hook up the backup drive!” (I’m using a laptop.)

I just ignored it.

After all, the drive isn’t that old (a year in August) and it’s a good brand (Seagate Momentus, same brand that Apple uses in their laptops).

Then one day it just started making a terrible, terrible noise.

Then the laptop froze up.

And that was it.

Dead.

I tried various tricks to get it to work long enough to get just a few files off of it.

Nope.

Fortunately I had the pictures on my iPhone, and was able to download them, but they were in ithmb format. Since Apple has decided not to let you use the iPhone as a hard drive (despite every other iPod being usable as one), you can’t store full resolution pictures on your iPhone. If you could have, I would have had the missing pictures (but not the videos) on my iPhone.

The next problem is that the only program I could find the read ithmb files was File Juicer, a $15 utility which helps Mac users get at all sorts of files. I had actually looked at it before but had never needed it.

I was able to download a demo, but it didn’t seem to work. Desperate, I emailed the developer.

(Given that the programmer lives in Denmark, where there are no iPhones as of yet, this limitation is completely understandable.)

He emailed me back and asked me to send him one of the ithmb files, which I did.

The next day he emailed me back an updated version of the app which could extract the iPhone ithmb files.

Now these are much lower resolution pictures than the originals, but they are much higher resolution than my backups — which you will remember consisted of zero pixels because I hadn’t made backups.

Compared with hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in hard drive recovery, or losing the pictures forever, $15 seemed like a good deal.

So learn from my mistake:

Step 1) Get backup software.

Step 2) Use it. Daily. At least.

Speaking of good deals, I realize that SuperDuper costs $30 and CarbonCopyCloner is free. To me it was a no-brainer. Backups are worth $30 to make sure that someone is dedicating to offering support, and the folks at Shirt-Pocket.com are great when it comes to support. The CarbonCopyCloner folks may be great folks, but at the end of the day I feel a little more secure with a paid solution. YMMV. The point is you need to be doing this on a daily/nightly basis with an app you can trust.

My new solution? I bought another 2.5 inch 160gb SATA drive (the same size as the one that died) and an external case for 2.5 SATA drives. When I get the Seagate back after its warranty replacement, I will use not just the backup drive that I have already (which I will probably keep at the office and have itself update daily a noon) but I can also keep the other drive in my laptop bag and when (not if) my internal drive dies again, I will be able to simply swap it out and replace it. Downtime should be less than 15 minutes. Total cost?

$100 for the 160GB SATA drive. $30 for the external SATA case. $30 for SuperDuper

$160 (and I had already bought SuperDuper, so really the cost was $130).

Compare that to what I did this time:

1) Drive to Columbus (2 hours) 2) Get replacement drive 3) Drive home (2 hours) 4) Find out original replacement drive was bad (I was having a lot of bad luck that week) 5) Drive to Columbus again 2 days later (2 hours) 6) Get replacement drive 7) Drive home (2 hours)

Note that had I ordered the drive and case online I probably would have waited at least 2-3 days for shipping, so this was about as fast as I could get it done unless I lived in a big enough city to be able to pop into a computer store and find an SATA laptop drive at a competitive price (which isn’t every big city. This isn’t something you will find at Best Buy).

Would avoiding all of that hassle be worth $130?

Probably more. Factor in the cost of your time and gas, and I probably would have saved more even if I had bought a second drive when prices were higher.

So that’s my backup strategy.

What’s yours? It is more than “Gee I hope my hard drive lives forever!” or “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of warning before my drive dies!”

Some hard drives may slowly slip into that great beyond, but some have a sudden massive heart attack and are gone in the blink of an eye.

I saw the gas light go on yesterday, or was it the day before? but hadn’t had a chance to get to the station in town that has the cheapest gas.

Tonight when Ethan and I were coming home, I saw the gas light come on and said “I really need to do this now.”

Now I show you this not to complain about the atrocious cost of gas while gas companies make record profits.

No, I show you this after searching through my car manual and the Internets for an answer to this question:

“How many gallons does my gas tank hold?”

Answer: 17.

Whew. Well, at least something went right today.

The service contracts are nearly ready to expire. I’ve been getting email, snail mail, and now a phone call trying to get me to renew the service contracts, all of which I have ignored.

Except the phone call.

Maybe I was bored (late Wednesday afternoon), but when the secretary told me someone from Dell wanted to talk to me about the computers, I actually accepted the call to see what their sales pitch would be.

The girl on the other end of the phone (and she sounded like a teenager, including saying “and stuff” about 12 times during the phone conversation, such as “We have a service contract that protects against the normal wear and tear from turning the computers on and off each day, heating up and cooling down, and being exposed to dust and stuff.”)

Girl: “My records indicate that you bought 2 desktop computers and 1 notebook computer. Do you know which computers these are?”

Now I presume somewhere on her list of people to call and harass into signing up for their protection program (does that remind anyone else of the mob?) it lists the name of the businesses/people she’ll be calling. Do you suppose that when the company name includes the word “church” that it’s a safe assumption that I remember spending $2,000+ on 3 computers?

Anyway, she went on to ask me if I was aware that the extended service warrantees were about to expire.

Me: “That would explain the emails and letters that I’ve been receiving just about every day for the last month or so.”

Her: (after awkward pause, probably trying to find the next line in her script) “Oh, so you know that it’s going to expire soon, ok. Well we can extend those warrantees through 2009…”

She went on, but I wasn’t listening. I was wondering if the thought crossed her mind that if I have ignored the emails and letters, it was because I didn’t want to extend the warrantee.

Her: “So have you used the extended warrantee?”

Again, wouldn’t it be good information to have already, rather than a) trusting that I’d remember and b) drawing attention to the fact that I have (in fact) not needed the extended warrantee that I paid for already?

I told her I hadn’t, to which she expressed a sense of… relief (almost “Wow, you’re lucky”)? Whatever it was, it felt a bit strained. It was then that she told me they could extend the warrantee to cover wear and tear “and stuff.”

“In addition, with the Inspiron, you have our Gold Support, which means that you have a two-minute wait time when you call for service…”

One presumes that she meant “a maximum of two minute wait IF I need to call (not when)” but the real kicker was the rest of the sentence:

“…and that will connect you with our Tier 2 tech support which is based in North America.”

Great, now when I call I’ll probably have to listen to some lousy Canadian tell me to “bout” my computer, eh.

On second thought, it probably means “Pay for the more expensive tech support package and you’ll get to speak to someone you can actually understand.”

After about 5 minutes she finally stopped talking. She didn’t pose a question or anything for me to respond to, she just finished her sales pitch telling me all the wonderful things I’d get if I renewed.

Me: “The Inspiron has been the worst computer I’ve ever owned, and if it blew up tomorrow I’d do a dance of joy.”

Clearly her script didn’t consider this as a response, because it felt like she was winging it when she said “Wow, I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t think I…. we usually don’t hear things like that.”

She then asked me what I would do if the desktops failed.

“I’d probably replace them with different computers,” I said after brief consideration. Either that or we could go back to typewriters.

“Well, it’s actually much cheaper to replace them under warrantee than buy new ones,” she replied. Not to mention that we get paid even if your 3 year old computer somehow manages not to blow up.

Me: “Yeah, if they died I’d probably not be replacing them with new Windows machines.”

Her: “So you’re not looking to upgrade to Vista?”

Me: “God, no. Why would anyone upgrade to Vista?”

Her: “Well it has some issues…”

Me: “Some issues? They’re joking that Vista Service Pack 1 should reinstall XP!” I didn’t mention that Dell and other OEMs essentially told Microsoft that they wanted to keep selling XP after Microsoft wanted to push them to 100% Vista.

Her: “Well it’s new and like anything else it has some issues, but I bet in a year they’ll have them all worked out.”

(UPDATE 2007-09-21: I wish this story had come out a few days earlier: Microsoft giving Vista Business / Ultimate users ‘downgrade’ to XP option.)

Me: “I think I’d take that bet, but anyway, no, we aren’t interested in extending our service contracts.”

Her: “OK, well if you change your mind, you can always call us at 1-800-Give-Dell-Money.”

Ok that wasn’t the exact number, but whenever someone expects me to spell a phone number I tend not to listen.

Coda

I went into the office and happened to notice a light flashing on the front of the laptop (which is actually pretty rarely used nowadays). I checked and it was the battery light. I pulled the plug, and sure enough, off it went. So I went online to find out if the battery was covered. The tech support guy told me that my warrantee expired yesterday, but batteries are only covered in the first year anyway. I opened another tab in my browser and checked prices on their website, which ranged from $180 for a new “extended capacity” battery, or $140 for a refurbished lower capacity battery. He told me to check with Sales for prices on a new one. I told him I’d try Google first.

Coda II

UPDATE 2007-09-20: Someone else from Dell just called, asking me exactly the same questions. She asked if I was aware that the contracts were up, and I said I was, in fact I spoke to someone yesterday.

“Did you get it all cleared up?” she asked, as if clearly there had been some mistake that they were helping me rectify.

“Yes,” I said, hoping that would be the end of it.

“And did you end up renewing those contracts?”

“No”

“Can I ask why?”

“Not interested.”

“Can I ask why you aren’t interested? Because I see here you have (she listed all the various support things that we supposedly have on them) so if anything goes wrong with them we’ll fix them.”

“You know, the steady stream of emails and letters for the last month and now phone calls haven’t changed my mind, and in fact it’s been quite annoying. We aren’t interested, you’ve taken enough of my time, goodbye.”

If another Dell rep calls, she’s getting an airhorn in the phone.

In short what it did was allow you to easily download and install the various updates the Microsoft offered, while easily avoiding the ones which you didn’t want.

One of the ones often avoided was WGA, the amazingly-wrongly-named “Windows Genuine Advantage.” WGA, for those who don’t know, checks your computer over and over and over again to make sure it’s not a pirated version. I’m not sure why it needs to check more than once since a version of Windows is, presumably, either pirated or not pirated. But WGA runs all the time. In fact you can’t download some Windows software unless you run WGA first.

Windows Genuine Advantage is no help to any Microsoft customer. Microsoft believes that most people who are using pirated versions of Windows don’t know that they are. However, these versions of Windows are not doing Microsoft customers any harm.

WGA, on the other hand, does.

For one there’s the inconvenience factor. Here but one example:

WGA, as you might imagine, doesn’t run on a Mac. I have high speed internet at work, but not at home. I bring my Mac to the office and try to download new Windows patches (which I can later install on my Windows machine at home) but oh-wait, I can’t do that, because I can’t run WGA on my Mac, so I can’t download those security patches. End result? My Windows machine at home is woefully out of date because trying to download these things over dialup is absurdly long.

“Well,” you say, “that’s such a fringe case. Most honest users of Windows never need to worry about WGA.”

Those who believed that were conclusively proven wrong when the WGA servers at Microsoft went down a few weeks ago. (See WGA failure highlights major flaw in Microsoft’s anti-piracy strategy.)

Autopatcher

I, like many others, liked Autopatcher because it could be downloaded once and applied on many different machines. I could stick it on my USB drive on my keychain and use it on any Windows machine I needed to.

Finally Microsoft told Autopatcher that they had to stop what they were doing or Microsoft would sue them.

So tonight, after a couple of weeks since I last ran Windows, up popped WindowsUpdate telling me there are new updates. I ran them and then, of course, was prompted to reboot.

Now when I login to my Windows XP installation, Windows Explorer crashes immediately. I can see it run briefly, but then it just goes away. I can run TaskManager or even a command shell.

Turns out that according to Microsoft’s own support site what probably happened was that a DLL didn’t install correctly. I tried the suggested fix (changing a registry value from 0 to 1) but my registry didn’t even have the subkey they refer to.

Even booting into SafeMode fails (great saftey-net Microsoft, thanks!)

Booting into my “Last Known Good Configuration” also doesn’t help.

Anyone involved in developing the registry really ought to be dragged into the town square and beaten with sticks.

So, to recap: the 3rd party site that provided me access to security updates from Microsoft worked without fail for as long as I can remember. Then Microsoft shut them down. On the first attempt to use WindowsUpdate, Microsoft managed to FUBAR my entire Windows installation.

Q: Where do you want to go today?

A: www.apple.com

(See QuickTime movie of failure-in-action.)