Word: fixedly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Brian Jones was the Mr. Fix-It of the expedition. He was quietly overseeing the construction of the gondola for Cameron Balloons when he was nominated to be a reserve pilot in the Breitling attempt. "Of course, reserves in any activity assume they will always remain reserves," he says. But he found himself, as he puts it, "in the hot seat" when Piccard had a falling out with his first co-pilot, Tony Brown. "He's not an adventurer," says Joanna Jones of her husband. "He's a professional pilot who approaches things in a judged manner." Jones quickly fell...
...took a seat in the corner, hugging herself and rocking. The poor woman depends on the machine for her work and tends to take its periodic meltdowns hard. The children skittered nearby, cheerfully harassing Otto Quittner, our new puppy, ignoring the crisis in their midst. They knew Daddy would fix...
...bought it. But like most other PC makers, Micron now charges $24.95 for help with software after 30 days (hardware help is still free). I understand why this has to be. Margins in the PC business are thinner than Bill Gates' smile. Why should any PC maker have to fix the zillions of problems that can arise when consumers install their own software? A few enlightened manufacturers, such as Dell, offer free lifetime support for any software shipped on their machines. As PCs become interchangeable--one box much the same as any other--consumers should choose a vendor...
...hour." It was two. "Is this some kind of record?" I exploded when at last a support guy answered. "Nope," he said with a chuckle. Two hours later, after taking me on a hellish tour of "msconfig"--an apparently pointless Windows 98 diagnostic tool--he admitted he couldn't fix the machine. He said I'd need to reinstall Windows 98. When I told him I didn't have my Win98 boot disc (a floppy disc that helps kick-start your machine by circumventing the hard drive), he said I'd need to reinstall Windows 95, the operating system...
Instead, I should have called CompUSA, which supports virtually all computers and software. At 1-900-CALL-COMP, you get $2.49-a-minute help (first minute free) from real pros. I immediately reached someone there who quickly diagnosed my problem as a corrupted registry and told me how to fix it. Kip Crosby, co-author of the indispensable Windows 98 Bible, later said the registry, a humongous file that helps initialize programs, is often where problems arise. "When it's corrupt, it's almost impossible to repair," he said, noting that hardly anyone in the support world will muck around...