Thursday, June 28, 2007

Adobe Tech Support

My copy of Photoshop on my main computer asked to be reactivated tonight, and the Internet activation failed, so I had to call Adobe's telephone activation line, (telephone activation, of course, also failed), so they transferred me to a customer service representative.

I could tell the guy was just reading a script, but I let him walk me through the troubleshooting steps, answering his questions, etc., pretending to be a clueless user. We walked through everything his computer told him to, and none of it worked so he put me on hold while he talked to a level 2 technician. Their conclusion of what my problem was? That I have USB ports on my computer. He wanted me to remove my USB ports in order to use Photoshop. He was very adamant and specific that it was my USB ports, not a device plugged into my USB ports.

Anyway, after explaining to him that I can't remove my USB ports he went ahead and gave me the reactivation code, and it worked. But oh my gosh… Remove the USB ports… That's really a new one.

If I was thinking a little more clearly I should have asked him the best way to do it. Should I use a hammer and chisel? Or is a jigsaw a better way to go? Perhaps chewing them off of the motherboard… or a little C4 smashed into the ports would take care of it. But what if none of those methods are quite precise enough? Maybe I should use an angle grinder instead, or rent a laser cutter, so I only have to remove that one part of the motherboard. After all, we wouldn't want to damage any of the motherboard's other components; we're only trying to remove the USB ports. What is the next step if I can't get Photoshop to load after removing my USB ports? And after the USB ports are gone, where do I plug in my mouse? Should I whack off the plug and duct tape it directly to my video card? After all, the mouse pointer shows up on screen, so it must be connected to the video card, right? The USB port is there only for convenience so I don't have to open up my computer to plug in my mouse. There's really no need to have a USB port getting in the way, preventing me from using Photoshop or any other Adobe software for that matter, they're just trouble. And when I want to copy pictures from my digital camera to my hard drive, I'll just epoxy that cable there. Let's just bypass the problem altogether, shall we?

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