Thank you for calling

Whoever said "patience is a virtue" never had the devil honking right behind him in a Mercedes convertible.

I'm typing this blog post from my new laptop (one that I bought yesterday) and which seems, oddly enough, to have a problem already. $630 doesn't count for anything anymore.

I used to get terribly defensive when people criticised call centers in India, and all those brilliant minds staying up at 1 am to take care of the world's tech support needs. This evening I spoke to "Melvin," who was very nice and very friendly, and who tried for 2 hours to help me with my problem, before giving up. He said he would put me through to the senior tech support person, made me listen to some Yanni and then hung up on me. Well, that could happen. It happens all the time, and worse, it happens with automated voice systems or whatever those microchip simulated waterfall-like female voices are called these days.

I called back and spoke to "Mary" this time, who thought I was deaf and had the IQ of a 9 month old baby (if any of you guys who actually read my blog make any wise cracks about this, I will have your legs attached to the space shuttle Discovery and your arms to the North Korean nuclear missile and watch the results with relish). I don't know what she gets to deal with every day, and some people don't like their jobs, but she gave me completely useless advice and hung up on me too.

I am reminded of the episode in F.R.I.E.N.D.S where Phoebe spends about 12 hours on the phone trying to get in touch with some telephone company people, at the end of which she discovers she spent all that time on the phone with the wrong company because she had dialed a wrong number. If it turns out that the problem with my laptop is something utterly ridiculous like pointing the router's antenna in the right direction, I'm going to strangle myself with the ethernet cable.

If anyone has any ideas other than restarting my computer, which I've done at least 20 times in the last 6 hours, please tell me.