Customer Service and Good Friends: the New Owner's Manual

The other day I spent a few hours at my parents' home helping them resuscitate their computer, which told them to press "R" for repair but refused to do anything else. (Ever been there? The experience leaves you feeling like your hair is on fire.)

Dad and I hunted around for some kind of instructions without any luck. Mom suggested in an over-the-shoulder-I'm-not-telling-you-what-to-do way that we should find the customer service number and see what happens. Mom is the great finder and fixer of things; we heeded the advice she didn't quite give us.

After we found Dell's customer service toll free number buried way in there, I called the other side of the world; dug out arcane information such as the purchaser and delivery site of this computer that was a gift; read codes off labels pasted on various parts of the tower; spoke audibly, slowly, and distinctly for a few hours straight; and did exactly what I was told; and--there was the computer back again.

Afterwards dad wondered aloud what people who don't have access to customer service or who don't or have anyone to turn to do in these situations. The answer seems to be that they find somebody. Somehow, the problem resolves itself. The manufacturers who know darn well we'll never read through a gigantic manual also know that we will go to the ends of the earth or at least the other side of it for human help.

Customer service is the new owner's manual.

I've heard it said that computers cause people to live in their own little worlds cut off from others. I suspect the opposite is true and that panic sets in when the darn things don't work precisely because computers are our portals to each other.

What I know about computers and programming and such doesn't come from any specific book (except R. Scott Hall's The Blog Ahead) but from my husband, our neighbor, members of our family, and other bloggers. Word of mouth--human contact--makes the whole thing go for me. My computer--when malfunctions as well as when it functions--throw me into contact with people all the time. Cool thing.

With this cool thing in mind, I'd like to thank the bloggers whose work has increased my computer knowledge and yanked me out of some technical trouble spots over the past few years: JumpBack (blogging, HTML, the Internet....), Cotojo (pc security), Sueblimely (blogging tech), CyberCelt (search engines), Kuanyin (link love), What Ever (manipulating the new Blogger template), and One Deep Breath (permalink coding). Please accept this little badge as a token of my gratitude.