This Love/Hate Relationship

Communication is a problem in Africa. Rule # 1 definably applies in this arena. There is almost NO mail service here. Phone service is patchy at best. E-mails keep us going, and Skype and chat sites tie us to our family a little more. Tonight was a night of hate/love with technology and communication. Brent went online to check our bank account and this was the chain of events that followed. When he mistyped the answer to a security question, that they asked since he was on his computer and not mine, the bank's computer was angry and "disabled" the account. When I tried to get into that account from my computer DS said " Your account has been disabled, please call this number to restore your service." Are you kidding? We're in Africa! It seems that the bank's computer knew that Brent was accessing from a different computer, but not that we're in Africa and could not "call this number." Big problem!

I happened to be talking to Scott on Google chat. I love technology and that we have smart kids who understand it! He figured out how we could solve this problem. He called me ON SKYPE from his PHONE, then he called DS on a conference call, put his phone on mute and turned the call over to me. So, I was IN AFRICA, on skype, through Scott's phone, talking to DS. AMAZING! When the DS employee started working on the problem he required that I give him some information on a recent transaction from our account, WHICH I couldn't do because they had "disabled " the account. That was the problem. There's the hate part again. The employee suggested that I come to the bank and work it out. I told him that I was in AFRICA!" His response, "You're WHERE?" So, we worked for another 10 min. figuring out how I could prove that this was my account. By using another account we have at that bank, which necessitated Brent talking instead of me since the DS employee's computer knew that Brent was the primary person on the account, Brent made progress. He looked at the other account on the other computer and gave DS some deposit information from the second account, established our identity and restored our first account.

SO, by going through Skpe on the conference call made on Scott's phone to talk to DS so they could tell their computer to let our computer give us our bank account information, the problem (which was caused by the computers in the first place ) was solved. It almost made me feel like a TRUE GEEK! I LOVE/HATE technology. Thanks Scott!

Post Script-30 seconds after this marathon of technological genius ended, the power went out.

Again we say TIA! Rule #1 vs. technology! We won!