Flashes of Panic

Kasia wanted to clear some things up about geeks. In most cases I agree (Star Trek: I don’t get it; T-shirts: all mine are from races) but I would like to correct one of her misconceptions.

• Geeks can fix things.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha — that’s all I’m going to say on the issue.

Well, yes. Geeks can fix things. Like just tonight, when A.’s WinXP Home machine wouldn’t go online. It does now, and it would not have happened without a geek, because Bog knows that was a troubling, obscure, and downright twisted fix.

Here’s what the non-geek would’ve had to figure out, once they’d cleared away all the dead wood (and after nearly three years, there’s plenty of that):

• The network hardware was fine.
• The network setup was fine.
• However, the system wasn’t getting DHCP settings.
• Because the DHCP Client service wasn’t launching.
• Because it thought it had a dependency.

There’s the sticking point… so I googled the error, “Could not start the DHCP Client service on Local Computer”, and found a helpful page explaining that this sometimes happens when you uninstall Norton Anti-Virus (which I’d done, since the signatures hadn’t been updated in about two years, and replaced it with AVG.) A “quick” registry edit (as if any registry edit is ever “quick”, and why should there be such a godawful complicated train wreck as a “registry” that needs such a Rube Goldbergian editor?) and we’re online quite nicely, thanks.

I fix other things, too, when they’re enough of a problem that I care to.

Now playing: Shiver from Parachutes by Coldplay