Help Stuart keep blogging

Stuart called last night from Thailand to tell me that he hasn’t been able to update his blog for over a week because his computer can’t connect to wordpress anymore. And he was really desperate to fix it because he is now a blogging junkie.

I logged into his wordpress account, no problem. So we sat at our respective computers and walked through a whole bunch of possibilities. We cleared his history and cookies, checked his security settings, checked and unchecked all kinds of boxes and went deeper and deeper into the whole quagmire of tech support. It was getting kinda scary really. Stuart is still under the illusion that I’m a tech wizard, which made it even scarier. He did everything I said and questioned nothing.

After nothing worked, I decided he should upgrade his browser. I walked him through all the snakes and ladders of Microsoft’s site, which was no mean feat because Internet connectivity on the River Kwai is unbelievably slow, and Microsoft buries the IE7 download under layers and layers of extraneous clicks. You click on download, and it takes you to another page of reasons why you should download. Each page took about 5 minutes to come up on Stuart’s computer.

While we waited for the pages to load he told me about his pomegranate trees and lime trees and the lizard-eating snakes in his garden and his massive water fountain and about how he got in trouble from his girlfriend for getting upset with the labourers because the labourers are Buddhist and apparently you don’t get upset with Buddhists in Thailand. He told me about his property taxes (eight cents a year) and the cost of shrimp and his vegetable gardens and how he wanted a squatting Thai-style toilet but they misunderstood and got him an American-style toilet instead. He even told me the latest gossip from Irene’s Pub here in Ottawa. Every now and then we’d click on something.

Eventually we got to a page that said we had to install something that would allow Microsoft to verify whether his was an authentic copy of Windows.

“Is it?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said, “The computer came with the house.”

We decided to take the plunge and install the verifier. Stuart’s computer failed the test.

“Well screw it,” I said, “Firefox is better anyway.”

So we went to Firefox’s site, where the download is ONE click away from the surface, and downloaded and installed it.

Unfortunately, we still couldn’t get into WordPress. We were both supremely disappointed. Two hours had passed, and we were no further ahead, except that I was caught up on the gossip from Irene’s.

So I told him to try it from another computer in Thailand – any other computer – and let me know what happens, because maybe it’s something specific to Thailand.

Then I went to the WordPress forums and posted a message asking if anyone knew what might be up. A couple of people suggested that the military junta might have blocked access to wordpress, as they’ve been known to block other sites for political, cultural or moral reasons. Youtube, for example, was recently blocked until they agreed to remove a video that insulted a former Thai politician or the king.

So this is my next tech support challenge: find out if the military junta is behind Stuart’s computer problems, and if so, figure out a way to outsmart the junta so Stuart can keep blogging.

Your suggestions, as always, are welcome.