Dear Friend,
It took me by surprise. Much like a parent realizes their child is ill, suddenly burning up with fever.
Early last week as I was completing my blog, my computer monitor was showing a screen that reversed colors on the toolbar. What had been white was now black, and vice versa. I didn’t know what to do.
Late Wednesday, it got worse. The entire screen had progressed to a reversal of colors. Reviewing my supermarket’s weekly ad to plan my monthly shopping, the colorful screen showed what should have been the healthy pink-coral of salmon, now a sickly green. As if the color wheel had spun around and settled on the color 180 degrees opposite.
My monitor, possibly my computer, was sick. My wizard husband tried several approaches, but they didn’t work. I reached my “computer doc,” BIGByte PC, just before they closed. They told me to bring the computer in the next day and they’d diagnose it.
We brought the desktop PC in and explained what was happening. They promised to diagnose the problem and call us. A few hours later, they called and put us out of our misery. We wouldn’t need a new PC, parts, or a time-consuming procedure!
The diagnosis: Some unusual combination of keys had produced my monitor’s screen, tailored to people with color blindness! So that’s what it felt like! Mike at BIGByte explained that he’d found the unusual situation and fixed it, so it couldn’t happen again.
When we returned home and plugged all the parts back together, everything worked with just a few toolbars that we’d likely switched still reversed. We easily returned things to normal, as we located them on several browsers.
Whew! My baby was healthy again. And I had a new respect for people with color blindness. My husband shared that his dad was red-green color blind. He needed help choosing his clothes because the combination of colors he’d decide to wear might clash horribly.
I am enjoying my computer monitor’s return to health. It changed my shopping list, as the idea of eating green salmon was unappealing.
Most of all, I am being careful about three-character key combinations, which so easily created the problem. I realized how vulnerable my computer was and that my work would be behind schedule if we hadn’t gotten it fixed quickly!
Crisis averted.
What this taught me: Don’t take things for granted!
P.S. I’m keeping Mike’s number easily accessible.
Best of health to you and your gadgets,
Shelley Sommers
