Meryl's Notes Blog

I previously noted that I was moving stuff from the old PC to the new PC. I spent most of yesterday installing, installing, loading, moving, etc. etc. and then by 10pm, I learned that everything would have to be wiped and the OS reloaded. Long story short, the PC to PC transfer feature that comes with XP… sucks. It brought over stuff we don’t want… and didn’t move stuff we needed. Don’t do it. It does not save you time at all. So, Paul stays up until 3am cleaning up the mess (I’m a lucky gal to have an in with a tech support manager). Again, I spent most of the day installing, installing, loading, moving, etc. etc.

One of the programs was Mastercook 5.0 Deluxe. Somehow, memory served me well and told me to go to Sierra’s Web site to download two patches. I did this yesterday and it worked flawlessly. Today was a different story and I couldn’t load the program. Frustrated with everything, I moved on to other things with plans to come back to it later. Later arrived and I went to Sierra’s tech support page to see if others had this problem. It took a little searching, but I found the answer and it worked.

Just finished watching "It’s A Wonderful Life" and it applied here. If it were not for the Internet, I would’ve had to wait until Wednesday since offices are closed tomorrow. On top of that, I would’ve had to nag Paul to call the Sierra tech support and he probably wouldn’t get around to it for awhile. Calling tech support through a relay is not fun especially with those stupid recordings. How is it not fun? Picture this:

TTY (teletypewriter = telephone for the deaf) calling operator (third party person) and tells operator to call Sierra Tech Support at 1-800-xxx-xxxx. Operator calls Sierra and gets the recording with the options. Operator types those options and I view them on the TTY. I wait for operator to finish typing and request pushing 2. Operator tells me recording has hung up and needs to redial to press 2. Redials, gets second level options, I wait, I request next option, recording hung up. Redial, rinse, repeat. Getting Mastercook working is not worth all this and nagging Paul. So, thank goodness for the Internet and its bringing together people with similar problems, thereby saving others from hours of wasted time and energy.