Some wine with that cheese

Nothing hurts more than losing a patient. Unless that patient belonged to somebody you didn't like. Plausible deniability works, but you have to fake sorrow.

We have a guy who works at one of my offices. People call him "Buzz". He's old enough, but I'm sure he never walked on the moon. Buzz has problems with technology. Lucky for him, though, he's a legend in his own mind. He breezes into the office with a sheaf of stuff to scan for, I dunno? His personal archives? He can't use a computer.

I walked through the door this Wednesday and smelled trouble just as strong as the smell of burnt pizza drifting up from the Giordano's four floors below. Our office manager walked up to me. She wore a smirk. "Buzz is looking for you."

"Oh?"

"The Internet is out at his home. He's going to ask you to fix it."

"We're not supposed to do support outside of the office."

"I know. [The admin you replaced] went to his house. He's going to ask you to go to his house."

What? Does nobody tell this man "no"? Apparently not, because about ten minutes later, Buzz walks by my desk.

"Uh... Yeah, the Internet's out at my home."

Pause. What was he waiting for? Me to ask how I could leap to the rescue? Where he lived? Whether he broke the Internet? "Okay..."

"Yeah, I need it to work."

"I can't work outside of the office."

"Well, the other fellow came by."

"I'm not him."

Buzz went through a bunch of different reasons why I needed to restore Internet connection to his home. Some things you should know: Buzz doesn't work for my office, per se, but he has received grants for travel and a computer because he promised to drum up enthusiasm for our seminars. So far, $10,000 later, nothing. He has an office on campus he never uses. He has an assistant who he used so infrequently, she was re-absorbed back into our main office. However, he needed the home computer for, er, work email. His wife works for the state retirement system and would be out of luck without that computer. If that failed, he would "talk to [my boss]". I respond to veiled threats with unveiled apathy.

"Can I tell her to give you a call?" he asked, turning large, watery eyes towards me.

"She can give me a call," I said. My shoulders slumped.

So she did. It helped that his wife was nice and seemed more lost than demanding. She gave me the error message, which I looked up. Not a lot of solutions. At home, they used dialup. So many things can go wrong with dialup. Worse, it's not like you can call tech support when your computer blows up. She was speaking on her cell phone. Okay, that works. Her computer still didn't. The limited information I had suggested her modem had failed or become unseated from the motherboard, but like many users she had her own opinions about her granddaughter using her computer, or maybe the lightning storm, or maybe...? One thing was sure, her operating system did not see a modem attached where once there was a modem, and the computer was very, very old.

I recommended she get a new computer, but, that being just my opinion, I also looked up Yahoo! tech support, so she could consult more advanced minds than mine. She called back ten minutes later. "They couldn't help." I gave her Dell's support number. Ten minutes later, nobody called. I thought I was off the hook.

The next day, the computer showed up at my desk. Buzz brought it in. He didn't leave a note, though. I realized it was his computer because, two minutes after I walked in the door, our office manager handed me a slip of paper showing me the model of computer Buzz had taken home from the office. They matched. On the minus side, the problem would not go away. On the plus, I might be able to fix the problem just by re-seating the modem.

I couldn't fix the problem. Was it the modem driver? Well? Aztech, the modem maker with the name adorably combining technology with bloody sun god worship, had drivers for Windows 2000, but only for New Zealand. Installing them kind of fixed the problem, at least until I tried to dial out. No dice. I looked up other access numbers. The computer made "faxing" noises, but fell shy of handshaking and acknowledging username and password. I installed the XP modem driver for US computers. Yahoo! still hated me.

"You're going to have to get another computer," I said for the second time.

He stared at me. "So, what are you saying?"

Nothing hurts more than losing a patient. Except losing your patience. That sucks, too.