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When PC troubles hit home there's
no help desk to call

By Coco McCabe, Globe Correspondent, 10/20/02

As telecommuters, my husband and I used to assume that what our family (two kids, two careers, and too many directions to go in) needed was a butler. Now, I know it's a live-in IT manager.

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I may grumble, but I've become competent at the drearier tasks of running the household -- the scheduling, the chauffeuring, the after-school snack prep -- squeezed in between the work that pays the bills. What I can't do is fix the computer.

I'm not embarrassed to admit my deficiency in this department because I'm sure I'm not alone. Why else would a company -- and there are hundreds of them -- pay someone $75,000 or more a year to baby-sit a peevish box if any dummy could do it?

Any dummy can't. And that's why I'm depressed. There's no hope for telecommuters like us without a pile of cash to lure some efficient IT type to the less-than-glamorous home front (here, people work in their pajamas and there are piles of dirty laundry around every corner.) We're on our own. And it's a mess.

Despite the many promises about the easy relationship I would have with my computer, there has been nothing smooth about it. The machine and all its appendages -- the Zip drive, the printer, the Internet connection -- require much more technical know-how than I have the time, or the interest, to fully master.

This humming box also has traits that seem almost human in their capacity to annoy. It's my office mate, my only one, and I suffer under its passive-aggressive presence. For starters, it's obstinate. It often refuses to do what I ask. And it's piggy, demanding ever more power to undertake what used to be so simple and pleasurable when the postman was in charge: getting the mail.

One hot summer day, with a deadline looming like a thunderhead, I called the local computer store and asked what I thought would be a simple question. Why can't this new machine (2 years old is still new to me) that I paid a freelancer's fortune for open all the e-mail it receives?

The answer was murky. Maybe it had to do with the operating system. Maybe it was a matter of memory. Maybe I'd better speak with the manager.

The store manager got on the phone. He guided me (click here, drag there), chided me (''I want you to know we really can't offer advice like this''), and finally recommended I bring it in.

When you're self-employed and have computer troubles it's like a terrible sickness in the family. Everything stops. Nerves are frayed. Spouse and children tiptoe around. You're excused from all obligations except one: Get the thing fixed. Fast.

I muscled the computer up the basement stairs and into the car in the box that it had come in. It was fat and heavy and I realized, as sweat trickled down my temples, that I could never lug all that plastic and cardboard across acres of asphalt in the mall parking lot. So, I loaded in another indispensable piece of technology: the wheelbarrow. That I could operate artfully. On its single wheel, I had balanced tons of stone dust and boulders, hay bales and children. Why not a computer?

I squeezed through the mall doors, navigated the crowds, and arrived at the computer store. It oozed cool with its white columns, natural wood counters, and black-shirted helpers. It was nothing like the dusty, note-cluttered nest my computer usually sat in. Everywhere, in air-conditioned bliss, shiny machines whirred peacefully, not a single grumpy, overheated one among them.

The Black Shirts raised an eyebrow or two as I rolled toward the repair counter. Genius Bar, it said. My wheelbarrow suddenly looked wimpy parked next to it.

Fifteen minutes, I was told, and all my problems would be solved. I decided to wait. On a huge movie screen flashed pictures of people like me: middle-aged, a little frumpy, busy. They were gushing about their relationships with their computers. Fun. Friendly. Intuitive. They were smiling. They were earnest. I took the pitch as a pep talk -- even as the minutes ticked into more than an hour -- and gladly paid the repair bill of $191.70. I knew I could cope now.

I zipped home, plugged the machine back in, and started to look for the mail. But I quickly realized intuition wasn't going to help with this hunt: An electronic link was missing, flicked off by the Genius Bar, and the mail couldn't be delivered. It took several phone calls back to the store before I figured that one out.

For the third time that day, I went to fetch the mail. Again no luck. A single message was all that filled the screen: ''The identity certificate uses an unknown signature algorithm.''

This was fun? Friendly?

Time was running out. My on-call computer guy wasn't around to help. Neither were any of the other whizzes listed in the Yellow Pages. They had been snagged, all of them, except for one who answered his cellphone while snarled in traffic in Washington, D.C. He sounded distracted. Should I trust him?

''Buy a new one,'' he shouted before the static zapped him.

Desperate, and dreading what I knew I had to do next -- impose again -- I phoned my brother-in-law, a former engineer turned kinetic sculptor who knows how to work magic with these things. I danced around my problem, but he knew what I was calling for. There was a long sigh and then, thank the heavens, a promise of help.

He came. He labored. He left. He came again. It took hours. It always does. And then, poof, there was the mail, finally opened on the screen. Relief swept over me. Another computer headache had at last stopped throbbing.

But then I began to think about it: Two days lost to nursing (and cursing) an electronic box? Who has time for that? Meals went uncooked. Appointments were forgotten. I had exhausted my brother-in-law's good will.

So if anyone knows an IT manager who makes house calls, let me know.

Coco McCabe is a freelance writer. She can be reached at cmccab@hotmail.com.

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