Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.

This may be a quotation from the Bible, but battles are still fought today and walls still keep tumbling down. I am not Joshua, but I find myself fighting battles time and time again with my computer.

All appeared to be well in computer-land except for my virtual postoffice e-mail. I kept staring at the yellow triangle with the exclamation point. The message told me there was an error. No matter what I tried, the message remained, glued to the middle of the monitor, the server could not be found. I agonized and I debated calling somebody from the club, sending out another SOS. I also knew that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life running for help. That sort of thing went on, day one, day two, right along to day seven.

I finally summoned up all the courage I had, picked up the phone and called SBC tech support number. I hated to call. After all, I would rather go to the chopping block than call Tech Support. It must have been my lucky day because after being told to dial 1, 2, 3, and so on I did get a live person telling me that I had reached Tech Support. My tech supporter and I had one thing in common; English was not our native language. He was kind, patient and supportive and I told him that I felt like a number one dummy.

He was very good. He sort of waltzed me across every conceivable place in my computer and a few places I didn’t know existed. He even reassured me that this problem was not connected to my rejection of Yahoo. Finally the computer agreed. I had the right name, the right number, the right place. Confident that that the battle was won, I returned to Outlook Express. There was a momentary silence that became a prolonged silence. The tech wanted to know if I was still there. Oh yes I was still there. And what did I see. If you guessed a yellow triangle you are absolutely correct. Now the silence was on the other end. There should not be a yellow triangle the voice said, sounding about as totally helpless as I felt.

At that point my brain went in to overdrive. It produced an idea. I recalled a question that came up when Mary and I were working on the purchase of my little security system. It was something having to do with the firewall. Mary had explained that I already had a firewall that came with the purchase of SBC-DSL. The conversation was crystal clear in my mind.

"She already has a firewall."

"Did she have problems with the firewall before?"

I shook my head. I had not had any problems before and I assumed that peace would continue. After all there was no reason why it wouldn’t. Neither one of us knew what would happen if the firewalls didn’t get along. And neither one of us thought that to be important enough of an issue to inquire.

That was THEN. This was NOW. And now I brought it to the attention of the tech. He said he wished he had known that at the start of our conversation and I wished I had been bright enough to mention that. After that the person on the tech suggested I find the icon that went with the firewall.

Frustration has a tendency to send my mind into limbo. I was so frustrated I couldn’t even remember the brand name of my security system much less the one that went with the SBC-DSL connection. I couldn’t find the folder Mary created for me that would hold all the updates. The tech suggested I remain calm and carefully look at all the icons. At least I knew what an icon was, and I finally spotted that little thing at the far corner on the right hand side, right next to the time and date. In small printed capital letters it said: EZ, and blessed be: FIREWALL. I managed the right click and the little monster was there on the screen. I was told to disable that. I’ve never been brave enough to disable anything on that computer. But I clicked. Would you believe that yellow triangle disappeared from view and e-mail came flooding in, piles of it. My tech -support person shared the moment of joy that I felt. He was very pleasant, thanked me for putting up with his linguistic shortcomings and I thanked him for putting up with my absence of mind.

I still have to disable that thing every time I turn on the computer. It’s kind of fun like kicking a demon in the tail. Mary tells me it is a good idea to uninstall the firewall to be rid of it on a permanent basis. But if your tutor was Clarence and he taught you a super healthy dose of respect about such things as UNINSTALL you might be a little hesitant. At this time I shall allow myself the luxury of taking on the persona of Scarlett O’Hara from the novel GONE WITH THE WIND.

"I'll think of it tomorrow!!!!
After all; Tomorrow is another day."
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