SNAFU This month was an extended lesson in the origin and nature of screw-ups. To wit:

Comcast - For the past year and a half Comcast has been double billing me for internet service. You see, when I signed up for the Comcast digital cable/high-speed internet combo I got a deeply reduced rate for my first six months. I knew, in the back of my mind, that after six months my rate was going to go way up and it did. I just didn't bother to look at the itemized bill. It came every month for the same amount and I paid it.

Then, I went to the Comcast kiosk at the Mall to check out an offer for a new deal and the guy pulled up my bill and told me I was being charged for two high-speed internet connections. What followed was pure farce.

I called Comcast and got a message about there being extraordinary call volume and I should try to use the Comcast web site to resolve my problem. I got on the Comcast’s online chat room with a Internet Billing rep. After a while this rep confirmed that I was being double charged, but said the second internet charge was coming from the Cable TV department not from the Internet department so I would have to get in touch with Cable Billing to resolve it.

So I got on the phone to Comcast again and received a familiar automated message: that the phones were very busy and I should try using email support. So I used email support -- I sent in my rather lengthy explanation of the circumstances and I got a message back from Cable Billing the next day to tell me that they couldn’t resolve my issue over email and I would have to call.

So I called again and waited past the message telling me to use their web site and I got an offer to have a rep call me back as soon as one was free, so I left my number. Ten minutes later I got a voice mail. It was from Comcast, but not a rep. It was a recorded message telling me I should press some button if my problem was not resolved. Huh? In what way will press a button in response to a voice mail get any information back to Comcast? I'm not on the line with Comcast, it's my own voice mail.

So I called Comcast back and this time I actually waited on hold until I was actually talking to a real person.

Turned out to be a very helpful person who verified my story and said she’d call back. And she did, and got my account credited (let's just say I won't have a cable bill for a while). Advice: when dealing with Comcast it is worth the wait to talk to a live person.

Pair.com - Pair.com is my hosting service for my two book sites (Read Apple Pie and Read Business As Usual). Now, I have touched neither of these sites in ages, although changes are coming Real Soon Now. Suddenly I am getting messages about being over my disk usage limit. The limit is 250 meg and what I have up there amounts to little more than a 5 meg. WTF?

So I send an email to Support asking the WTF? And they reply that I have over 250 meg of mail messages. I registered these sites many years ago and along with the site registration comes a free email account. But, I never used it. Never did anything to configure it. Never gave it out to anyone. Just pretty much forgot it ever existed. My status remains at WTF?

Well, despite it never being used or published spammers found it. And over the years they were loading up the inbox until they hit my storage limit. 250 meg of spam! Do you have any idea how many messages that is? I tried to clean out the messages but there were so many it took my whole system down. I finally had to ask Pair.com to delete all the messages, then I promptly disabled the mail addresses. Sheesh.

Kernel Panic - Most people are familiar with the Blue Screen of Death in Windows. Basically the system just totally freaks out and tells you need to reboot and start over. It happened fairly regularly in early versions of Windows, although I have never seen one in later versions of XP or Vista. In the Mac world the equivalent experience is something called a Kernel Panic. I love the descriptiveness of that.

Anyway, after just shy of two years with my iBook, I started getting kernel panics. They were intermittent. Sometimes the thing would shut down before I could even log in. Other times I would get a day or more of up-time before the crash. Naturally, this all started when I was half way across the country, so I really didn't have many options for staying connected which was a pain since I really needed to be connected.

Upon my return I ran all the diagnostics and reparations I could find but to no avail. So I turned it over to a Mac repair shop and told them to have at it. As I write this, they are still having at it. I couldn't wait, however, and decided it was time for me to move up to a new laptop. If they fix it, fine, I'll have a spare -- maybe keep it permanently hooked up to my receiver to play iTunes. Other than that, I'm moving on.

My new friend is an HP Pavilion Verve Edition. With Vista. Yes, I now officially a re-switcher. The Mac was nice, and for a long time it was solid. But I never got used to the navigation, having spent so many years with Windows and still having to use Windows at work. Plus, there is software you miss out on with the Mac. In my case, I'm a heavy MS Office user and I found Office for OS/X to be a little eccentric. And I love Google's photo utility Picasa, which is not available for the Mac. (Picasa seriously rocks, and it's free. It's not comprehensive enough to replace a real photo editor, but it’s great for organizing and viewing photos.)

Of course, I was promptly reminded what a mess a fresh MS based system is -- all the pop-up tips, the warnings, the reminders, the intrusive demo software. Ugh. And the MS approach to security is silly. On a Mac, whenever new software is being installed, the system asks for your login password. Makes perfect sense. That stops unwanted software from getting installed maliciously from the web, and from strangers who may find your laptop unattended, and from friends and family who just want to check their email. In Vista, you don’t have to enter a password but you do need to click through about four or five "Are you sure?" type messages. That is poor design. Oh well, at least the keystroke navigation that I have burned into my brain cells works again.

Anyway, they key thing is that I am up and running again and can continue to get work done. At least until the next SNAFU.