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I have spent the last few days in a lather of frustration and perspiration. I turned on my trusty (?) computer the other night and found I couldn’t get onto the internet. I did my normal technical checks. Was the beast switched on? (Yes) Were all my connections intact? (again yes, 100%)

I did the most technically complicated thing I knew. I switched the computer off and restarted it. They say if you do the same old you get the same old. Guess what, they were right.

I kept getting conflicting messages. First it would say (rather petulently) “You are not connected to the internet.”) I would check and it then said. “You are connected.” (I am sure it whispered ’stupid!’)

Then it changed it’s mind again and said it couldn’t connect to my modem. I sat very still for a long time. At last I got my temper under control and telephoned my son. He rattled off a number of instructions certain to fix the problem instantly. The problem was he may as well have been speaking Swahili.

When I get like this my son’s voice changes. He starts speaking to me as if I am deaf or slow. Eventually we arranged for me to unbuckle my computer from its leash and take it to his laboratory. It’s actually his den but he is one of these frightfully clever people who not only builds computers, he is a talented musician and also a qualified sound engineer. I don’t know how he tolerates the older generation.

He worked on the problem for almost three hours. I must confess I got a degree of perverse satisfaction when he couldn’t fix it. Then he had an idea. “I think the problem is with the firewall. He turned it off and voila! It worked.

I asked him if we could access my e-mails as I was sure there was a mountain of them. We went downstairs and had lunch while the computer went about its business. When I got back I saw an e-mail from Zone Alarm (I have their firewall). They were alerting us to the fact that MicroSoft had released an update that apparently had an effect on Zone Alert firewalls and we had to take action to correct the difficulty.

I’m afraid I laughed and laughed and laughed. I had lost over two days, but still found something to laugh at. Think about it a minute. I couldn’t get on the internet, therefore I couldn’t access my e-mails. So, I had to solve the problem of getting on the e-mail so that I could be informed that there was a problem and they would supply me the answer.

I am now sitting at home, downloading the ‘fix’ and ruminating about the situation. It’s funny how two unrelated happenings can have a profound effect on others not directly connected to the happenings. MicroSoft developed a solution to a problem. This resulted in a possibly more serious problem, with no clues as to the origin of the difficulty. Talk about six degrees of separation.

I just checked. I have been downloading the solution for an hour and am only 41% there. A late night tonight.

This gets me to thinking. Sometimes random challenges and problems occur. There is no obvious cause and they can be very frustrating. About the only thing you can do is gather what information and help you can and tackle the situation head on. Find something to learn from the situation. I know if I have another situation where I cannot get onto the internet I will switch off my firewall and try that. It might even work.

What positive did I get from the situation? I got to spend more quality time with my son. I got to love and appreciate him even more and I learnt that sometimes, when things go wrong, I didn’t do it. I also learnt (again) any challenge or problem can be overcome or solved and you can always learn from it.

 
Live Well,

Ollie Lind