"Murray," I told my old friend, "I've had it with this e-mail stuff. There's spam everywhere, and it's an effort just to keep the system up and running and immune from the zillion viruses that lurk out there."

"If you're kvetching again, Kess, there must be something wrong. What is it this time?"

"Our circa 2000 computer died a few days ago, but the story started four years ago with the evil "U" word - upgrade. We decided to enter the 21st century and switch our dial-up service, which was constantly crashing at one point, to broadband. That's when the fun began. We went from having sporadic service to none, and there was more blame going around than you hear on sports talk radio."

"This sounds divinely intriguing. Go on."

"After getting the cable service hooked up, it sort of worked for two days, although something totally bizarre happened: The account that had supposedly just been set up had spam junk e-mail in it dating back several months." "How could that be?"

"Haven't the slightest idea, and neither did the Cable Guy or Cable Company, which dismissed it with a metaphorical shrug of corporate shoulders. But I knew better."

"What was your theory?"

"I blamed it on the Evil Upgrade God, who is a first cousin to Murphy of Murphy's Law fame."

"You eventually called tech support, I presume?"

"Now that's an oxymoron designed to strike fear and loathing into the mind of non-technical savvy computer users at home who are just trying to check their e-mail. Yes, 'tech support' was called, but the experience was exasperating."

"Why? Did you get ignored?"

"No. The cable folks' computer gurus listened, but then said the problem had to be in the computer. The computer company's techies listened, but were convinced the problem was with the cable company.

"After another call to the Cable Giant, the same technician returned to the house with reinforcements, and after about an hour, determined that the problem was in the computer. The Computer Company said yep, it might be, in which case you need to expunge every last living organism from the computer and go back to Genesis."

"What did you do?" "Well, oddly, Murray, there was only a bit of cathartic cursing, and then we called for an expert opinion - a computer doctor who made house calls. And what he found was not a pretty sight."

"You mean a virus had affected your computer?"

"Not just one, but close to 200, including something called spy bugs, which are viruses sent to the computer that could be doing a number of wonderfully wicked things, including sending all of your personal information elsewhere or making phone calls to sites worldwide on your dime.

"Did the 'doc' help?"

"He cleaned out the viruses and did what the Cable Guy couldn't: he got the Internet connection up and running."

"That's great news, then, so why are you still so downcast?"

"Because this Internet business is a time-consuming losing proposition, that's why. To try to stop other viruses, I've been running programs for years, and a couple of years ago, trying to upgrade that, crashed the computer.

"Fast forward to last summer, when our computer died - or so we thought. This time, we brought it to an area computer hospital, and the honest-to-goodness friendly fellows were able to salvage the machine."

"Then why so glum?"

"Because I tried another virus-protection upgrade last week, and this time, the computer stopped letting us open Word - it felt like one of your vital organs quitting on you. After another trip to the same computer hospital - and a lot of work by them - the verdict was in."

"I take it not a good one."

"No. A wake will be scheduled for our computer, which is kaput."

"Sorry to hear that. What are you going to do?"

"I'd like to use my circa 1994 computer with Windows 3.1 and Word 6.0 - a perfectly reliable writing machine - but that machine lacks Web access, so I'm afraid we'll have to buy a new computer that will no doubt be outdated by the time we get it hooked up.

"It was a lot simpler back when I was writing on my typewriter. At least then, if I got junk mail, I simply tossed it; I didn't get spam, and I didn't get those infernal forwarded serial e-mail messages from people with way too much time on their hands who insist on copying jokes and so-called chain e-mails, thereby infecting your computer with more nefarious viruses - and taking up valuable storage space."