Ok, here's the short version of the story. Sold a computer to a woman who was a bit freaky. She gave me the creeps from the minute she walked in. Big thing that stuck out in the coversation was the fact that she was menopausal. "Hmm...I don't remember seeing MD, PhD at the end of my name..." Anywho...against my better judgement, she bought a system from us, and wanted us to install it for 'em.
Sure, not a problem, even though it is just plug green into green, purple into purple, and blue into blue. But, we're nice guys, so we take the 1/2 hour drive to deliver the system.
She was freaky when I went out there. Native American music blasting in the background, the heavy scent of incense hanging in the air, the tomtom drum in her hand all made me feel a tad uneasy about this delivery.
She talked nonstop about stuff...nothing in particular...one of those people who has to ask and answer their own questions. "What is that? Oh, it's the mouse. Where does that go? Oh, in the purple plug. Have you set up the Internet? How do you get in the internet? Oh, it's the same as my old computer. What's Windows ME? Oh, it looks like Windows 95. Does it run like Windows 95? Oh, it looks like it does." Well, you get the picture. Imagine this going on for the ENTIRE installation. I began wondering if this woman came with built-in O2 production and she didn't need to breath.

Anywho, I get through the installation in one piece. I get her internet set up (after dealing with some morons at her tech support...problems accessing internet, I called and asked if there was something funny going on, "Nope. Password works fine." I know the password works fine, why is Windows ME not accepting the internet password? "Fine, I'll reset the password." I thought you just said the password was fine...told him I tried telling it to bring up terminal window after dialing, and manually entering name & pwd, and it worked, until I hit "Continue", and he just said, "You aren't supposed to connect that way. The password works." ARGH! I wound up deleting her old connection, and recreating the connection and it worked fine...sept their DNS server was down, and couldn't go anywhere on the net).
A couple days later she called absolutely livid that her computer wasn't working the way it should be. It would always come up with the "Program not responding" when she shut down, one time it wouldn't wake up from Hibernation mode (Damn WinME for it's GD hibernation mode, she wasn't the only one with those problems...didn't Microsquash ask IBM WHY they got rid of Rapid Resume?). Blah, blah, blah...she went on about 10 minutes about the "End Task" problem, and the "Test pattern" problem over and over and over. Eventually, fed up with her nattering, I told her, "Well, bring it in."
After the nattering for another hour or so she finally decided to bring it in.
So, her daughter brought it in with a lovely note attached (I just LOVE notes).
"- Start up today with error message
- close for the first time correct
- CD Wizard has stop sign on it & couldn't use it yesterday today when I turn the machine on the stopsign was gone
- I left a cd in the cd player forgot to take it out/also couldn't disconnect the telephone cord so I took it with it
- Please give the machine an extra good look because I wouldn't want this to become a habit."
Ooo! An EXTRA fun note! So, I power the beast up. Hmm... No problems. I shut it down. Hmm... No problems...
I pop the front faceplate off and notice a purple goop on the front of the machine. She did a half-assed job of cleaning it up. I clean it up, flip it on its side, and notice a large goop spot on the bottom. Nice...I WONDER why the machine was causing problems.

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***the Beast
- I only came for the platypus soup