My friend in Pakistan is fine, praise the Lord!  Thank you for your prayers!

My three month old computer crashed!  It started lagging big time and so I re-booted.  It never came back.

Thank God I had backed things up nine days before.  However, it's amazing how many things I had done in those nine days and lost!  The worst thing, again, was losing my email.

I have a Dell computer.  I recommend that you do NOT buy a Dell only because they expect you to do most of the work when your computer has a problem.  When something happens to it the technicians are very nice, but sometimes hard to understand as they speak with some kind of strong accent.  They mailed me a refurbished drive (a three-month-old computer deserves a new one!) and talked me through the installation.

I spent two hours on the phone when the computer first crashed.  I had to be home to sign for the hard drive they mailed, which arrived two working days later.  I spent more than two more hours on the phone while I was installing the refurbished drive and programs.  During the installation, after I read to the tech what I saw on my screen, he asked me if I put the old, dead drive back in!  Then he had me delete some partitions on the new, refurbished one.  That told me they didn't even send me a good replacement drive.

Then they threatened to bill me for the new drive if I didn't send the old one back.  Neither technician I spoke with told me to make sure to mail the old one back.  What if I threw it away??  I couldn't read the email they sent telling me I had five days to get it in the mail to them!  I told the first tech to NOT send me email.  My computer was dead!  They were billing me for over $200 for a dead drive!  I could buy a new one for less than that!  So, then I had to be home waiting for the delivery service to pick up the old one!

Next time I'm going to Best Buy and get a computer.  I'm sorry I bought a Dell!  Before the crash I loved it because it was so much better than my old one, but the customer service is what made me not like their company.   I wrote a letter to the CEO.  I'll let you know if he replies.

I guess this is the same lesson my son learned about car insurance... you get what you pay for!

I'm glad that the things I'm doing here are important enough to get the enemy's attention, but I'm tired of having computer problems!

I bought a back up device to make sure I don't lose anything again.  The darn thing had a problem, though.  It backed up OK, but it only saw 30G of the 160G hard drive I put in it.  I tried to troubleshoot with the help of their techs, who were in India or somewhere, but their communication skills weren't very good and I got tired of waiting 24 hours to get a reply.

I took it back to the store and found out it was cheaper to buy an external hard drive that comes with a back up program.  The guy I originally talked to at Best Buy assumed I wanted something to back up a network of computers.  He also assumed other things that I didn't know.

Communication is very important.  If there was more, clear communication then our lives would be much easier.  There's too much assuming going on.  There's too much purposeful lack of communication, too.  Dell knows that if they put in the warranties that people are expected to do the work themselves they would sell less computers.

I used as an example in my letter to the CEO of Dell:
What would you think if the water pump of your new car, still under warranty, went out and the dealership mailed you a rebuilt pump (which took four days) and told you they would call you when you signed for it so they could walk you through the installation process?  How would you feel if they DIDN'T call you and you had to call them?  How would you feel if the mechanic asked you if you were sure that you didn't put the old one back in instead of the new one because, apparently, the new one wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing?  Would you buy another car from that dealer?  Of course you wouldn't.

Now I'm having trouble understanding how to work the program that backs up that came with the hard drive.  Communication, it's all about communication!

Remember those multiple-choice tests I told you about last time that I was typing for my husband?  Well, I lost them in the crash.  That was a lot of typing that I lost.

The other thing I lost was my email.  There were some really interesting looking emails that I didn't get a chance to answer.  I sure hope those people come back to find out why I ignored them and write again!

Think about what happens when you have computer problems.  The friends you made online don't know what happened to you.  They don't know if you are having computer problems, if you had an emergency, or even if you died.

Sorry, didn't mean to depress you.  I guess I need to go think happy thoughts!

Did I tell you I am a professional webmaster now?  I have a couple of friends who needed web pages and so I jumped into the webmaster position.

The first one I did is:
Pistols and Petticoats, Wild West Re-enactors
(The group broke up and is now Guns and Garters.)

The second one is still in the works, but is open for business.  We are having a hard time coming up with the specifics of how to display and sell the flowers:
Flowering Twigs

So, now that I am a professional webmaster you can feel privileged.  I'm doing the Clarion Call for you for free.  Just for you.  Imagine that!

The letter I wrote to the CEO of Dell about the problems I had getting my 3-month old crashed computer up and running got a response.  I got a phone call and talked at length about the problems I had.

The man I spoke with said some of the things I experienced would be brought up at some type of meeting there with the high mucky-mucks at Dell.  However, I kind of had the feeling that they aren't going to do much to change the situation.

I should have been sent a pre-formatted hard drive that I only had to plug in to my laptop, or I should have had the option of having a technician format it for me on such a new computer.  My computer still isn't right.  I have two of the same operating system showing up.  The only way to fix that is to reformat the drive and I DON'T want to do that.

So, nice as it was to have that man call me, I don't plan on buying another Dell product.  The price is low, but that is because they cut costs when it comes to repairs under warranty.

I have a feeling I know why the man at Netgear gave me his phone number.  He was touched by Jesus and thought it was me.

The other day I was looking for something in the old welcome messages and ran across an encounter I had back in 2003.  A waiter had shaken my hand and told me how glad he was to have met me.  I had forgotten about that.  I often find where people react in ways that are unusual when I talk with them.

Lately I've had a few people tell me that they really enjoyed talking to me and were glad to have met me.  That might not seem so unusual except, we didn't talk about anything important.  I can't remember exactly, but it was something as simple as talking about the weather.

So, it wasn't the actual conversation that made them say that.  It was something deeper.  They felt Jesus.

In John 15:5 Jesus said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."  He meant it!  He is really, truly abiding in us.  If we acknowledge Him and allow Him to guide our words and our actions then He can be seen through us as if we were a window.  Praise God!