Pleading the Fifth

The fifth amendment in the McPherson bill of rights must be, "You don't have to help someone if you are an idiot." Otherwise people wouldn't plead ignorance so much. This morning I was having trouble installing an application. I asked Grace how she installed it and she said Mom did it for her so she had no idea. Since Mom is always busy, I figured it would be best not to bother her. After my typical prodding and banging and replacing random important sounding files routine, I discovered that I was lacking "Microsoft.NET 3.5" (I had something like 1.44 B.C.) I took all the files off Grace's computer and replaced all my important looking files with those ones. (That disclaimer in the WINDOWS file that says "IF YOU REPLACE ANY OF THESE FILES YOUR COMPUTER MAY CEASE TO FUNCTION" is obviously nonsense)

Anyway, no cigar. I went downstairs to ask for help. I asked Mom and she naturally asked Andrew, since Andrew is the "smart" computer guy. Anyway after he said that of course I couldn't simply replace some files! This was a Process!! It's not that simple! I therefore asked him how to replace a process. No use. He had apparently heard that dealing with processes was difficult but he couldn't actually give me any useful advice.

Yeah, I eventually figured everything out on my own. After downloading a Microsoft.NET 3.5 installer and finding out it was a "Bootstrapper" (It sounds illegal but it isn't.) I downloaded a different installer and got it to work. Phew. Very exhausting. Just one of many good reasons that I did not go into computer science.