God, I hate computers

Earlier this evening, I tried to import a bunch of email addresses from a spreadsheet into my Outlook contacts file. It should have been easy. There was even a menu selection in Outlook to do exactly that. Well, it didn't work as planned, but I'm a smart guy, so I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do it, having to name ranges in the spreadsheet and all sorts of esoteric geeky stuff to try to avoid manually typing in 100 new contacts. When I finally found the combination to make this happen without error messages, I pushed the "continue" button, even though there was a warning that the process couldn't be stopped once started. I panicked when I saw my Outlook contacts disappear before my eyes, replaced by 58,000+ new blank contacts. I rebooted the computer to stop the process, thinking this was probably easily repairable since I have Microsoft OneCare, a virus, tuneup, backup program. Well, I tried to restore the files three or four times, using both Express and Custom settings, and every time the program told me that the files already existed. Well, they might exist, but I couldn't find them. I figured my 200+ contacts were just lost in the 58,000+ contacts, and I just couldn't find them. So I selected the whole Contact file, and then deleted it, making sure my contacts weren't there before trying to restore them again. OneCare came back after the restore process, and once again told me the files were already there!!! OK, I gave up. I tried to contact OneCare Help, and spent the next effing hour trying to figure out how to sign in for help!!! In the process, I did read a few postings in the forums about how the so-called Help Center was apparently designed to do anything but help. One reply from Microsoft agreed with some of the points that were made, but tried to justify it by saying that each help call cost an average of $10, so it wouldn't take long to eat up the profits on a $50 program. Well, a couple of points in response....if Microsift designed the program properly in the first place, so much help wouldn't be needed. The next point is that Microsoft has something like $50B in the cash on hand, so I don't have much sympathy for them crying poor. In any case, I finally did get an email off to the Help Center, and they've told me that I'll have an email reply within 24 hours. I'll believe it when I see it.

So including this rant, I've pissed away the entire evening screwing around with my computer when I had planned on curling up with The Golden Compass.

My next computer will definitely be a Mac. They might not be a whole lot better, but they've sure got great commercials.