Spent another big chunk of a day on the phone with India – tech support for my mom’s computer this time. She paid for the Extended Service Plan which is unlimited time on the phone with someone who is supposedly quite skilled at figuring out computer issues.

Well, even the best of them have a hard time when BOTH the mouse and the keyboard show intermittent behaviour problems (mostly the mouse).

After turning the darn thing on and off about a dozen times, doing a system reset to a few days ago to no avail, the tech guy decided that it must be a nasty virus and suggested a system rebuild – back to the day it was made. This of course required that I use keyboard commands to try to copy a previously saved folder of data to a flash drive. I did a system restore – or whatever the heck it is called – the thing where you roll back to a previous date – in April, so that was already there. And since she doesn’t get 200 emails a day and is not adding to her contact database on a daily basis, I think if we ever get this sorted out, she won’t feel the effects of lost email too much. Eh.

After wiping the machine clean, the mouse and keyboard still don’t work right and NOW the guy suggests sending her a new keyboard and mouse. If I had been thinking, I would have run home and brought over a mouse and keyboard to test. But I didn’t.

If those items do not work – THEN then we have to send them the computer and they will fix it.

This is why I have a local tech support person who comes to my house if I get in a jam. I just can’t spend the time! And time is money. I pretty much lost most of Sunday due to this issue at my mom’s house.

Ask everyone you know for recommendations on a good computer tech. If you are in San Diego, I recommend Annie Blevins at http://www.ibannieb.com. She is great and was originally recommended to me by my fellow VO buddy and current San Diego MCA-I President, Jeff Gelder – http://www.gelderhead.com.