“He got himself into this mess and he can get himself out.”

“How much is too much?”

“Is anyone going to offer any assistance at all?”

I know my first thought sort of contradicts my last thought.  But, that’s what this video makes you do.

This is one of those moments you won’t remember.  Your friends will be telling you about it and you’ll deny, deny, deny.  You will have no recollection of it all and you just won’t believe what your friends are trying to tell you.

Oh, wait!  You don’t have to take their word for it.  It’s all over the internet.  Millions of people will see it.

That’s what I want to comment on about our society.  This Internet world we live in now used to be so slow and impossible.  We didn’t know how to use it at the time.  If you wanted to get your message out, it could take days, weeks and even months to finally find one person to hear it.

But now, it’s the very thing that makes it possible for a girl in South Carolina to take off her clothes and a guy in California can watch her.  Plus, we have so many toys to play with too.

Digital cameras on cell phones make it possible for a businessman in New York to think he’s picking his nose in private, but a bunch of college kids in Florida know all about it.

And millions of hits within a few days are possible if a crying little girl is spilling her heart out over how badly everyone is treating Britney Spears.  That was a guy?  Oh, my bad.

This guy will never get a chance to deny that he was drunk off his @$$ in public.  Just remember, take a hint from all of the viral videos spinning around the internet.  Always act like there’s a camera on you.  Because, most likely there is one.

I woke up one morning and made myself a pot of coffee.  In the process, I booted up my laptop and then logged onto the internet.

I rely heavily on my Sprint Air Card, and I will get to how useless Sprint tech guys are, but I logged into my Sprint account to check my internet usage.  I get over 5 GBs a month and I have to make sure that I have internet left at the end of the month.  I’m getting better at naturally knowing my usage, but I still check just about every day to make sure.

Anyway, I logged into my account and immediately got an update message.  My Sprint Air Card requires Smart View software to run it and the new version was available.  So, I downloaded it and tried to install it.  That’s when my problems began.

The installation deleted the old Smart View files.  But, it failed to install.  My day stopped and it hadn’t even got started yet.  Work that day was put aside.  Fixing my internet connection became a mission to fix my computer and every solution required downloading software from the internet.

With the Library just down the street, I did have some capabilities.  I visited the Library and was able to connect to their wifi network.  But, researching the problem and finding solutions was getting more and more impossible.  The forums and informative websites I visited talked about similar problems, but had solutions that would not solve my problem.  I fixed a good bit of other problems though.  Ones I didn’t know I had.  But, my Smart View still would not install.

I called Sprint and got their tech guy.  But, this was the next day and I was at home.  He asked me if I had internet access.  I told him that I could visit the Library again, but I wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone.  So, he just guided me through a series of steps that didn’t require internet access.  Basically it came down to completely wiping my computer and the registry clean of any Smart View traces.  Then visiting the Library the next day, downloading the software again and trying the install once more.

Sprint offered me help in the form of sending me a new air card and having me visit a local Sprint store to get the software, which they didn’t have.  I could go on and on about how useless Sprint was with helping me with my problem, which I had them fully agree that it was their software, their download, that started this whole situation in the first place.  Even though they admitted their fault, they offered very little help.

A series of lies – they said they would Next Day the software to me.  The next day came and I called to find out from another tech guy that the software would take 6 to 8 weeks.  The new tech guy told me that it would be easier for me to visit the store where I found out that they didn’t have the software either.   But, the guy at the store was nice enough to offer to download the software for me onto a small flash drive I just happened to take with me.  But even though I had the software on my computer and on a flash drive, my problem was with installation.  It was about to get drastic.  I was actually considering wiping my entire hard drive clean and reinstalling my OS.

Anyway, you get the drift.  Sprint was no help to me.  My problems were compounding by the day because I had to use the internet to get work done.  I had to live by the Library’s hours to be able to get my work done, which meant I had to do my research and get all the information I could possibly use so that I could return home and at least still have work that I could do at home.  Three weeks of this and I have had enough.

While I was at the Library one day, I came across a website that I thought could help.  But I had encountered so many solutions that hadn’t helped me at all, I had all but given up hope.  I chose to give it a try.  Why not?

I wanted a different venue, one where I could have a cup of coffee.  So, I chose Barnes & Noble where I could sit at their coffee shop, courtesy of Starbucks, and connect to their wifi network.  I visited the website I had the day before when I was at the Library.  It has a form where I put in my name, email and asked a question.

Within mere seconds, I was chatting with a tech guy about my problem.  He told me what he thought the problem could be.  Then, he asked me if I wanted him to fix it.

Well, sure…

I was offered three methods to pay.  Two were free.  I chose the free Netflix trial membership and the guy went to work.

He literally reached into my computer and started getting to work.  He could have been from Texas or New York, but he was in my computer and I could watch everything he was doing.  I bought a refill for my coffee and then watched this guy go to town.

He went through some preliminary steps that I had already tried.  But, I knew he had to do those things in order to properly analyze the problem and discover its solution.

It was when he dug deeper that I started to learn some things.  He tried the Smart View installation and when it failed, he found out why.  He copied files.  He checked the registry.  He moved files and changed permissions.  He manually adjusted things and when it was all said and done, he installed my Smart View and it worked.

The installation worked perfectly.  It made my day.  I had my internet back.  I had my business back.  I had my life back.

For a two week free trial membership, I literally had my own personal tech guy who was solving my problem NOW.  Not tomorrow.  Not next week.  Not after he gets through all the other work he has to do…and not for $50 – $100 an hour.  NOW!  For FREE!

Oh, Sprint gave me a free month of internet access.  Actually, it wasn’t free.  I hadn’t had internet for three weeks.  They basically took a month off my bill, which was practically the month I had gone without usage.  So, they will work with you.  But, don’t count on them to try to solve your problems even when they are the reason you are having problems.

Count on your own personal tech guy…

Digital Support Tech

I learned typing on a typewriter.  Are there any that still exist?

We walked around listening to radios through our headphones until the tape player came out?

We had to buy an artist’s entire album.

I played Space Invaders and Donkey Kong on my Atari 2600.  It came with Pong and Asteroids.  I don’t think any other games existed at the time.

I wrote letters and called people on the phone.  I got tangled up in the phone chord every once in awhile.  The first phone I ever made a phone call on had a rotary dial that took two minutes to dial a number. click click click click click

We had to wait for a movie to come out in the video store and we had to sit through commercials on the television.  That was the bathroom break.  I’m not saying video stores and commercials don’t exist today.  I’m just saying that’s what we had to do.  There are other options available now.

We had to look things up in encyclopedias and dictionaries.  Or read a book.

I have mixed emotions about it.  I mean, I would rather sit in front of the computer and type in a search that comes up with a million and one sites that I can begin exploring and finding my answer.  I love being able to correct my work before I print it.  I love being able to put together a CD with only the music I enjoy.  It does seem as if we live in a world that in many ways, has a lot less waste.

But, I think children of today are missing a rich education because they are handed the easy way and they never learn the foundation from which teachers can build.  When a teenager is on the internet instant messaging her friends and using abbreviations like omg and lmao, she then starts writing like that in other areas of her life.  She writes her term papers with abbreviations and misspellings like “u” and “b.”

“Win u get 2 b da prez, dats win u own da world.”

OMG!!!

So, in many ways it’s a far better world.  I just don’t want anyone to lose sight of where we came and how far we’ve come.  Our history is an important part of our future.