He's Back!

Remember this post? Can you hear me now? Well guess who has been calling me? Yeah, it's him. He has called every day this month because he is in a hotel trying to connect to their network.
The concept is easy. Painfully easy. Although I can understand some people have a hard time with it. Let's see if I can explain it to you -- There are a vast number of servers on the Internet. So many machines that it is almost next to impossible to track down a specific server. But first you have to get connected to a network that is connected to the Internet. Once you are connected to that network you can use it to get to a server anywhere in the world. Now let's say you require a secure connection to that server. Well then you are going to need VPN to secure you a pipe to that specific server. Simple? Right! Step 1, connect to a local network. Step 2, connect to the Internet. Step 3, startup the VPN.

Unfortunately, this guy can't get past Step 1. To make matters worse, he seems to think I can see through the phone. To top it all off, he has no patience with the relatively slow laptop. Clicking 20 times on the little wireless icon opens up so many windows he gets confused. Trying to describe each of those windows as they open confuses him even worse. Of course, he can't describe the windows the same way each time, so that confuses me. Having six copies of Internet Explorer running from all the past attempts to connect himself do not help either. Add not knowing the difference between "Closing" an application and "Minimizing" an application into the mix really spices things up as well.

My only saving grace is the lone tech support chick at a Holiday Inn Express in Oklahoma named Angela. Angela, you are my hero. Not just for being able to calm a frustrated old computer illiterate geezer down, but for the simple fact that she can close the 20 wireless windows down, and close the six copies of Internet Explorer down, open up a fresh copy of IE and click on the "Yes, I agree" button on the "Would you like to access the Internet" web page her hotel pops up upon a successful connection to their network. Yep, 3 mouse clicks fixed this guy. I was on the phone for 45 minutes and it all boils down to 3 mouse clicks.

The nagging feeling in my bones is that there must be something wrong with me when I have to spend 45 minutes on the phone with a guy that cannot understand that all he has to do is double-click on IE and then click on a button labeled "Yes, I agree". The really sad thing is that I've had to explain it to him twice already for this particular hotel. He'll be at another hotel soon with a different network and different connection screen. I can only hope there is another Angela working at that hotel.

I really hate the fact that I'll never get those 45 minutes back either.