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By Ron Hauenstein, CLU, ChFC

Nothing has frustrated me more in the last two months than my computer problems. After eight weeks of effort, I have made zero progress. My digital subscriber line (DSL) high-speed Internet connection does not connect, the two computers at my office are not talking to each another, and the BSOD—or blue screen of death—calls my name daily.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I will also concede that some of my problems were brought on because I am cheap. When Qwest, my DSL provider, said they wanted $295 for a modem, I said no thanks and bought my own on eBay for $62 delivered. After a month of phone calls and emails between my Internet service provider, Qwest and the modem manufacturer, it was mutually concluded that this modem would not work with my ISP.

The urgency to pursue a goal should never push us beyond the limits of our ability or understanding.

Back to eBay to buy the modem that Qwest uses. This time I was set back $189. But after two hours of reconfiguration, my ISP said, “Too bad you didn’t call us first. We’re going to erase what you just did.” After 40 minutes of reconfiguration, my DSL modem still did not work, and my ISP rep went off in search of a Qwest techie to fix it.

Quarreling hardware
In the meantime, I think my computers had a world-class spat, because communication is nil. I can imagine the conversation that preceded the shutdown:

Yawetag (Computer 1): “You’ve got some nerve, spending all that money.”

Lled (Computer 2): “We’ve needed to upgrade for a long time now. You’ve been driving this family with that tired 266 heart of yours for so long. And your memory. …”

Yawetag: “There’s nothing wrong with my memory. I still know where all your mistakes are stored, Buster. And I’ve seen the way you act when the new assistant touches your keyboard. You keep boosting your modem speed for her while I get stuck holding the files.”

Lled: “Honey, don’t you know I only have megabytes for you.”

Yawetag: “Fatal error, Sir Gigabit. This chat line is officially closed!”

So now when I use one computer to try to access files on the other, I get the same response that I get at home when I ask my 17-year-old to mow the lawn: sullen silence.

Always a solution
My new notebook computer worked flawlessly for about two days. Then the display went fritzy. Then it cleared. It randomly goes haywire. But I found the cure. If I hold down the left front corner of the computer while lifting and twisting the top left corner of the display toward me, voilá, I have a perfect image again.

My notebook’s modem failed out of the box. After an hour on the phone with the computer manufacturer, the highly trained and polite support person said, “Let’s uninstall this thing.” It reinstalled itself on reboot and worked perfectly.

On another start-up, though, I went to use the modem and was told that my hardware had failed again. For weeks I had to uninstall and reinstall the modem to get it to work. Then it just started working on its own. Maybe it knew I was going to DSL and it would soon be replaced by something 100 times faster.

One of the best sources for getting help when you see an unknown error message is the website Google.com. Computer users from around the world use that site to submit their problems, asking fellow soldiers in the technology wars to share their solutions. When I looked for help regarding an “invalid media type” error, Google found 214,000 entries in less than a second, including this one:

Hallo, ich bekomme bei verschiedenen Gelegenheiten diese Fehlermeldung.

I wonder what would happen to our business if we dealt with our clients the way our computers deal with us.

Client: “Ron, can you give me a comparison of 20- and 30-year term?”

Ron: “Sure, it’s IRQL, not less or equal.”

Client: “I don’t understand.”

Ron: “It’s easy to figure out. You just take an invalid request, multiply it by a fatal exception error, and you’ll get an invalid page fault.”

Client: “What are you talking about?”

Ron: “The page cannot be displayed. If you continue experiencing problems, try restarting your agent.”

Ron Hauenstein, CLU, ChFC, is a veteran insurance agent who signed his first contract in 1983. Contact him at rhauenstein@ ft.newyorklife.com.

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