Just Another Day at the Office

Personal computer (pc) repair technicians and doctors have a lot in common.   Patients arrive at the doctor’s door bearing all manner of complaints or problems.   I am sure doctors have seen and heard about every type of ignorant stunt a person can think of or do.   My name is Skeeter Jones, and I have been a pc repair technician for approximately fifteen years.   Like a doctor, I thought I had seen and heard of every crazy stunt imaginable until I received a call from Headaches, Incorporated about a computer crash.





When I arrived at the job site, Lola and Chase, the office and terminal managers, greeted me.   “Boy!   Are we ever glad to see you,” they both cried in unison, “We have completely screwed up the computer.”   “Well, show me the computer that is down while you tell me what happened,” I replied.   “Linda, Lola’s co-worker, told us upgrading our computer system from Windows 95 to 98 would be easy for us to do ourselves.   All we had to do was purchase the Windows 98 upgrade compact disc (CD),” Chase said.   “Except, we could not find the CD.”   Lola chimed in, “We picked out this CD instead.   The salesman at Office Depot said, ’It would work just as well to upgrade our system.’”   I looked down at the box she was holding in her hands.   The words “Windows 2000 Upgrade” stared back at me in big, white letters.





I just stood there for a minute shaking my head, and I silently groaned to myself.   “Oh God!   How could anybody be that stupid,” I thought.   With an audible sigh, I said aloud, “Let me run a few diagnostic tests.   I will be able to tell you how much damage has occurred in a couple of minutes.”   I started with the basic stuff like making sure the computer would boot up.   Then, I progressed layer by layer to the heart of the system.   The tests took me nearly three hours to complete.   As I dug...