BCU. What the hell’s that all about. Hmm.. BCU… think…think…Got it. Basic Computer Usage. That’s the stuff I am asked about by friends when out and I’m no good at answering that stuff. The people that can’t do BCU I just can’t help coz they can barely elucidate their problem. When I have given up trying to understand their gibberish and resort to the ‘what did you do or install last?’ question I usually get the ‘I didn’t do anything’ response. At that point I lose interest. Of course I could go and look see their PC with its problem but can’t stand the thought of all the confused gibberish I’ll have to listen to.

On the other hand anyone that does know BCU and they mention some issue then I don’t mind trying to help out. Back to the former. Someone rang to say that Word or Office had ‘gone’. He wanted to know whether he should uninstall the ‘gone’ Word or Office, and reinstall Word, or Office. How he was going to uninstall something that had ‘gone’ beats the devil out of me. Anyway I asked him what made him thing it had ‘gone’ and the answer was that when he started Word it had lost all his documents. And how did he know that? Also when he received an email from someone with an attachment it wouldn’t open. Hmm… But all his documents were all OK and found in MS Works. But that was no good as all his friends used Word or Office and none used MS Works. Sounds the wrong way round to me.

I mentioned to him that the documents weren’t lost but that Word was just looking in the wrong place when he tried to Open a document. Why Word had lost sight of the docs folder is probably not worth thinking about. I tried to tell him how to change where Word looks for documents but got a feeling that bit of advice may not have worked.

This person is regarded as a bit of a geek in his circles and has a reputation for knowing how to do stuff and people phone him up when they have a PC problem. Heaven knows how confusing those conversations are.