One of the many Apple fanboy’s in my life really enjoys showing me every error message that his ancient PC produces.
Todays example is a classic.
We tried a few technical fix it things and managed to find a little more information.
Somehow this extra information failed to de-confuse the situation or make OK a decision that we wanted to make.
Grumble mumble
Swear
foot stomp
For goodness sake Microsoft if you’re still going to fail after decades of practice providing services then at least give me empathetic failure message not this ARCHAIC SHITE!
That’s empathetic with the emphasis on PATHETIC
I’m getting so annoyed that I’m getting all SHOUTY
If you effing bothered to test properly so you get the design right in the first place then I wouldn’t have to suffer your error messages and troubleshooters.
Grumble mumble
Bad mood
When I got to work I found the door kicked-in and half a dozen laptops stolen. Booo!
The desktop computer I was planning to use wasn’t stolen. Phew!
When I turned it on this frustrating black message showed-up. Disbelievingly I rebooted the computer 3 x. Just incase. It didn’t make any difference. Poo!
Our IT department had a super-hero taking-out the hard drive and getting my stuff on a working (Apple) hard drive, in less than 30 minutes. Though I suspect that actually having an external boot disc for the computer would have been much quicker. But who uses external boot CD’s these days?!
After such a dramatic ‘where’s my computer gone’ day at work I was relieved to be home. The Cupboard had other ideas. She was considering a sympathy suicide. She leapt to the floor. Bollocks. She may have shown me a blue screen of death, but all I can remember was this monochrome thing when I attempted a reboot to fix it. She’s defintiely passed away.
Dad has always claimed that I have special powers over electrical equipment. He’s an electrician, he knows these things. He says I can break electrical goods by merely looking at them. I was never allowed to go near electrical equipment as a child. At least it was for a good reason, not like - ‘you can’t do that you’re a girl’. My life experience suggests that dad was onto something.
I need a new computer….. oooooeererrr.
Hooray! New toy!
What should I get? ipad? Chrome thingy? Surface thingy?
The Wendy House toilet has a high wall-mounted cistern. Fabulous water pressure flushes the toilet with a gravity induced whoooooosh.
But the cistern has always filled slowly with a noisy trickle of water. The whole arrangement is reminiscent of Victorian school washrooms. While waiting 15 minutes for the cistern to fill is not a problem when I am alone, for guests it introduces a timing problem at peak use times.
With an imminent Wendy House party, home improvements are on the menu. Replacing the limescale clogged cistern valve. Yay. No problem. Or so I thought. A quick trip to the DIY shop where the sales assistant didn’t even know what a valve that controls the waterflow into the tank above the toilet was. Sigh. I picked the valve that looked most like the one already installed and toddled off home. So far so good. I switched off the water supply to the house then climbed on a tall bar stool to reach the cistern, remove the lid and start trying to unscrew the current valve.
Things started going wrong. A bit of the old valve broke off in my hand. A close inspection of the instructions for the new valve revealed that despite diagrams I could now work out what this meant
fit ballvalve using backnut(s) provided and ensure that the spigot(s) are used to centralise the tail of the hose
The backnut, spigots, tail nor hose were labelled in any of the 4 diagrams. Quickly I resoted to visual matching, make the new one look like the old one currently looks (without the limescale or broken bit). Then I realised that I would probably have to take part of the wall away to access the pipes.
The doorbell rang
Hello I’m Rob White and I’m canvassing for the Green party in May’s election. Can I ask you if you know whether you are going to vote in the election
yes
I can ask you, you know if you’re going to vote, or you are going to vote?
errr… ..um, I am going to vote
Are you going to vote for the Green party?
Valve in hand, I look at the two young perky faced boys on my doorstep
Have either of you ever changed a cistern valve?
Oh no, that’s very complicated, I’d call a plumber, you’re a brave person
They start backing away slowly as if I’m holding a loaded weapon. I’ve replaced cistern valves before. Normally its a couple of minutes, an easy job. Their lack of willingness and skill is a tad disappointing. I reassure them about my vote and non-violent intentions then call Kevin.
Wonderful Kevin sorts out my cistern with Canadian calm
Cistern refill time has sucessfully been upgraded from a 15 minute trickle to a 30 second flow. Result! Almost grounds for a proposal.
The internet stopped working…
A lot of booting fixed the problem. Such is the way of things.
I think we’ve been passed as having consistent files…
with a bleed screw and radiator key.
This is something that I do every year. It happened this week – bleed my radiators. Many of my US friends will not have heard of this charming old country annual tradition. Most houses I visited in the US were relatively new and had hot-air circulation systems providing the heating, not radiators.
The Wendy House has a novel coil-spring doorbell circa 1960′s. For some reason it isn’t working. WD-40 and a bit of fiddling hasn’t yet fixed it. I do enjoy a personally relevant, memorable, chorus delivered with passion. Ring my bell!
White Stripes sang Doorbell
The TV remote isn’t working….
No, Wait. it’s the TV that isn’t working…
Oh, actually its the socket that isn’t working….
Hang on, its the ring-ciruit that isn’t working.
Ah, the fuse flipped while I was out. Probably some freak lightening storm over the Wendy House. Wish I’d seen that!
During the diagnostic process I discover that the Wendy House has at least two separate electric rings in the front room alone!
BANG! the fuse flips again. No lightening storm in range. Odd. I flip the fuse back on
BANG the fuse flips again. Darn, its clearly broken and not fixing itself. I call dad who walks me through a cunning diagnostic process that includes sniffing sockets and plugs, switching various things on and off. Using dad’s excellent problem-sourcing strategy I find the wiring of one socket is causing the banging.
With a message left on an electricians answer machine I’m about to discover the joys of having my sockets seen to. I’m rather looking forward to it, aren’t you?
Windows Vista provides problem reports and solutions. That is helpful for people who want to try and fix something now, cheaply. We don’t have to pay for a service specialist or spend hours fiddling in the depths of the control panel. This is quite nice of them. Or is it?
All Neverland’s 169 reported problems are atribbuted to Windows rather than other applications. Should I be alarmed by Windows? Or, iIs this because other programs don’t use the Windows problem reporting system or is it because Windows has an infinitely higher problem rate?
On planet wendy there are no problem reportsbecause the program causing the problem would receive the report, fix it then make me a cup of tea and compliment me on my choice of frock.
Kevin the Canadian wonder plumber stopped by. Some people have implied that my unreserved praise of Kevin may not be motivated by plumming necessities. Heres a summary of our November rendezvous at The Wendy House:
1) 2 weeks ago to fix the hot water hose on my washing machine.
2) 1 week ago to fix the leaking bathroom sink plughole pipe.
3) this week to unblock the bathroom drain.
After unblocking the drain Kevin gave me, for free, his spare set of rods and tuition on how to unblock the drain myself. Awesome, with Kevins thoughtful tution I am gradually learning the basics of how to look after my home. Kevins outstanding full service cost less than the basic call-out charge of any of the online drainage services.
After bleeding the bedroom radiator the heating system lost pressure. The boiler safety system switched it, and all my hot water, off.
January. No Heating. No Hot Water.
In a moment of stinky-armpit panic I resorted to the boiler ‘user manual’ looking for ways to top up the heating system pressure by adding water from the mains. I know this because I’m a sharp cookie, or so I thought…
Which valve do I use? The red, yellow or one of the blue valves?
After an hour of reading puzzling diagrams and mystifying text I
- gave up
- washed in cold water
- called the plumber
- relayed my tale
Wendy: I’ve read the user manual, almost all of it.
Plumber: (raucous laughter) that’s no use! There are half a dozen copper pipes under the boiler, some thick, some thin, between two of the pipes is a silver pipe, turn the valve on this one to add water to the system, you’ll hear the water flowing. Watch the pressure dial until it reaches 1.5 then turn off the valve.
I pulled-away the wooden surround beneath the boiler and low and behold, a silver pipe with a valve. Fixed in less than a minute with no plumbers call-out charge and the added bonus of now knowing several of my land-lady’s, and neighbours’, wine-induced DIY emergency plumber call-out stories.
fourteenth post in a Wednesday series of the shocking truth about “why wendy’s single“.
Reason # 14: Fiddlers fix-it list didn’t (fix it)
I followed the Fiddlers fix-it list. It normally works. It didn’t work this time. Actually threatening boys with screwdrivers seems to have the opposite of the desired effect. The wiggling and squeezing stage appears to be fairly well recieved, if the screwdriver hasn’t already scared them out of the building.
I’ll try and keep my screwdriver well and truely under wraps on subsequent dates.
Follow this well-tested fiddlers-fix-it list whenever an appliance starts playing up, being darn rude, or completely refuses to play at all:
Hope that helps. Feedback and suggestions for refining this list welcomed.
This public broadcast service has been bought to you by Dr. Wendy and copious cups of black tea (with milk). Dr. Wendy cannot be held responsible for any injuries sustained as a result of following this advice or the moodiness of your appliances.
