Apparently I was a bit too smug after getting Internet Explorer 9 downloaded and installed Saturday afternoon. The techno-gremlins came back to bite me later in the evening when I tried to renew a prescription on my mail-order pharmacy’s web site. “Prescription # and birthdate do not match our database,” the stubborn site insisted. I copied the number carefully off the prescription bottle, and I’ve been using the same birthdate for (mumble mumble) years, but the web site insisted one or the other was wrong. “Please call this number during regular working hours,” it said. Not much else I could do.
Then last evening my Kindle froze. I have no idea why. I was poking around the Kindle Storefront with the 3G connection, and when I tried to come back to the book I’d been reading, all I got was the title and a blank page. I tried opening the owner’s manual, but all I got there was the same blank page. I slid the switch back and forth a couple of times, but the Kindle kept coming back to that blank page. Being one of those people who reads instruction manuals, I had a vague idea that holding the switch longer would either turn the reader off completely or reboot it, so I tried that, and it worked, although it was the equivalent of holding down the on/off switch on a PC until the screen goes dark. When I was able to get into the owner’s manual, I discovered that there is a gentler way, although it only works if the menu system responds.
So this morning I knew I was tempting fate when I tried to run the update QuickBooks offered me. Last week at work we installed a new version of QuickBooks, our main bookkeeping software, and it seemed to be running fine, but Friday it wanted me to run an update when I opened the program. I tried, I really did, but I got an error message, some cab file missing somewhere, and I abandoned the effort. This mornming I tried again, and this time I went further, retrieving the installation disk from Jo Anne’s office and putting it in the CD drive when asked. Mistake. The drive spun, the computer locked up, and I had to, you guessed it, hold down the on/off switch until the screen went dark. When I got everything up and running again and reopened QuickBooks, it asked me to register, the disk having apparently unregistered me. But it wouldn’t accept the user ID and password that worked for all of us last week, even after I did a repair reinstall. Now every time I start the program it asks me to run an update I’m afraid to run, and every time I change files it asks me to register and rejects my attempt. I’m afraid this one may require a phone call.
But there may be hope. This evening I took another run at the pharmacy site, and it accepted my renewal request without a murmur. Somebody, somewhere, fixed something. Maybe QuickBooks will come to its senses, too.
Kay Hudson 