HOLDING HANDS WITH HENRY

I'm going to call my problem "Henry" -- because I can type "Henry" faster than I can type "MSVCR71.dll"

I'm sure all of you can immediately recognize that I have a computer problem. The dreaded ".dll." Nothing is ever good about seeing a ".dll"

Jerry was up before I was this morning, and as I walked from the bedroom he announced in that peculiar voice - the sound that tells me something is wrong with the computer - that SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE COMPUTER! It is the voice that is just one notch below the voice that says there is something wrong with ME! After finishing opening my eyes, I quickly sat down at the computer and tried to open up AOL. And there, staring me in the face, was an ERROR message about Henry.

I rebooted the computer. He was still there.

I then used Internet Explorer to access AOL and get to LIVE HELP, which actually always is able to provide an answer. The disembodied JEI read my SOS and eventually told me that Henry was not an AOL problem but a Microsoft problem and I would have to go to the following website to get help: www.tomshardware.com/forum/186248-31-cant-launch-game-msvcr71-found. When I saw that "cant launch game" business I thought to myself that this website isn't going to do it for me. I then went to MS's website and learned that I would have to get down and dirty inside all the guts of my computer to get myself out of this. I clicked JEI away, clicked MS off my screen and agitatedly cogitated. What to do. What to do with Henry.

So my little brain told me wait for son Sean to come home from Albuquerque and have him help me. Everyone should have a Sean for their Henrys. It will probably be the weekend before my computer is free of Henry, but that is ok.

However, in trying to find AOL Live Help via IE, at one point I clicked on "MY ACCOUNT" and there I saw that I was delinquent in my payments and no longer could access AOL. I really didn't think that was why I got the Henry message, but after finishing with JEI I asked to be transferred to the billing department to check the delinquency message. I had the ominous feeling that in 1997 when we opened up our AOL account that we had paid with a MasterCard, not AMEX. Recently I'd had a senior moment where I thought I'd lost my Mastercard, so we cancelled the old one and got a new number. To my embarrassment, after receiving the new card I found my old one; I had simply misplaced it. Since we had not been notified by AOL that our old card wouldn't work any more, it was just a lucky accident that I saw the delinquency message and was able to rectify that problem before I ended up with two problems.

Now I'm paid up to date, AOL has the new number so I'm not likely to get a collections agency after me, but I'm still left holding hands with Henry.

Ah, me. I am waiting for the time that using my computer will be as simple and as sure as turning on the iron, or the radio, or the lamp. Click - it's on and working. Click - it's off. No problems, no Henrys. Do I think this will ever happen with computers? Maybe somewhere down the line, as I really do think this electronic age is in its infancy and things will improve, but it isn't going to happen in my lifetime.

So in the meantime, at least for the next few days, there will be lots of cussing from the computer room as poor Jerry and Henry tussle around while he tries to navigate IE to read his AOL e-mails. I may even add my voice to the din on occasion if my irk level is reached.

These are truly times that try men's souls.