I live with a techno-wizard.  He's of the fine cabinet making school of computer programming. He's always told me that Microsoft is not only drecht, it's also a den of immorality and general scumminess.  It goes something like, "Bill Gates never met a brilliant company that he didn't take over, suck the guts out of, and spit back out."  And like this: "The man has never had an original idea in his life."  So, I was warned.

Nonetheless, this same techno-wizard suggested, no insisted, that I upgrade to Office 2000.  He thought it would clean up all the bugs in previous versions.  Ha!

It started out innocently enough.  We backed up  my system onto a tape drive.  And I determined that I wouldn't have Office 2000 overwrite my existing Office applications.  No, not me; I'm smart.  I know Microsoft is scummy.  So I said (to my 'puter): "Let's put it in a new directory.  In case something goes wrong." Ha!

But it seemed like a good idea at the time. Really it did.   And so I did it.  There was one disturbing bit of information along the installation trail: it had to overwrite Outlook '98.  Okay, I thought.  How bad can that be? I synchronized it all with my Palm Pilot just days ago, so I could always synchronize it back.  Ha!

To make a very long story (about 24 hours long) short, when my system restarted (as they all do when you're installing software; it's not like had a choice about that one!), it came up with a missing .dll file error message.  I said "Okay", without having written down which .dll file, and without having called my techno-wizard to the scene.  This was my first mistake.  Okay, two mistakes.   They turned out to be fatal.  The next thing I got was an error message telling me that Explorer had committed a fatal error.  I said "Okay".   And then........ nothing.  Just nothing. 

So now I called in the technowizard.  He poked around for 45 minutes (during which he wasn't at work getting paid the big bucks).  Then I called Microsoft.  After about twenty minutes, the techie told me we would have to go into DOS, and he wasn't very good at DOS. So I called in the techno-wizard again, and they talked.  And talked.  And the TW did what he was told (mostly).  And nothing improved.

Then the TW talked to another techie.  This one taught him how to get around everything and get Windows to run anyway.  That part was cool, but it didn't help.  And then, finally, four hours later, I sent the TW to work.   After all, one of us had to make money!

When he got home in the wee hours, he tried new stuff.  And two hours later, it worked. I had my computer back.. I had Outlook back.  I had my files back.  (I still have to "associate" the files I've made over the years with the applications.  Seems that installing Office 2000 wiped out that part of my 'puter's "memory".)   And I still have Office 2000; the various "uninstall" commands succeeded in uninstalling the uninstall program, deleting Outlook, and wiping out other and sundry little gems.  But I can't use it until we have a backup of my system, the TW tells me.  Why? Turns out that tape backup we did before we started didn't work. Ha!

So, in the spirit of gratitude for my TW and his patience, and in the spirit of vengeance for Microsoft Madness, I say: I hate technology (except when it works)!

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