ItsGeekToMe.co

Geek Note: The following are excerpts from a series of e-mails that were exchanged between me and “John F.” over a period of time from July to August 2015. I was surprised to hear from someone in England, and he was surprised that I was willing to try and help with his problem.  Needless to say, it was a most proper and polite exchange.

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Q: Recently, the Local Storage box options on Adobe Flash Player have both stopped reacting to the cursor, thus disabling any videos/tv programmes I’m trying to watch on their accursed system. What to do?

I realize that you’re somewhere in America and I’m here in England, so you’ve got no reason to help me – I can only appeal to the kindness of your heart!

– John F.
Brighton, E Sussex, UK

A:  Oh, John!  You’ve hurt my tender little feelings!  What are you trying to do, start an international incident?  But seriously, the World-Wide Web has brought us all together as a global community, so I have no less reason to help you than I do someone with which I happen to share allegiance of country!  You have a problem; I’ll try to help you with it.

I would first ask, however, how in the world (pun intended) you found me?  I would have thought that there are far more prominent sites that would show up in a typical web search than my I.G.T.M.  In the 8 years that I’ve been writing the column I’ve only ever had one other international correspondence and that came from someone who is a regular winter visitor from Canada to my area of the Florida Panhandle.

Before I go and put too much into a research effort for your problem, I’d like you to take a look at the instructions given here: tinyurl.com/IGTM-0426.  That page seems geared toward Microsoft Internet Explorer, and I see from your computer description that you’re a Mac user, but perhaps you can do the equivalent operations on your Mac.  Let me know if that solves your problem, please.

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Very touched to get an instant reply from you – it was always a long shot anyway, and I was expecting a response in somewhere between the eight weeks your autoresponder mentions and never! Very solicitous for your tender feelings now!  Even in jest, I only meant that it felt a bit cheeky and presumptuous on my part to be asking for your help.

As for my question, I’ll try your suggestion – thank-you so much – but it could all take some time, I just saw that Mozilla have today blocked all Adobe Flash, basically on the grounds that they’re rubbish.

Your view on world-wide community: mate, I second that emotion.  Respect due to you for living it not just saying it.  Did you see that story on the Philippines kid doing his homework on a slum street by the light of a McDonald’s window?  People on the net were moved, and now he’s got a school scholarship, school uniform and some spare cash.  If that’s not wonderful, I don’t know what is.

How did I find you?  Mate, you’re more of a star than you know!  I just typed Abobe Flash into Google, and you were just a third of the first page down. Thank-you again.  One love!

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John, you never wrote back and told me whether my advice helped to fix your problem!  I would consider using your issue in the column if I knew for sure that my advice was worth a fig.

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 Never tried your advice!  As I mentioned, by chance a couple of weeks ago I saw where there was activity with Adobe at macro level, so I thought I’d leave it for a while – doing battle with anything computer is a Kafkaesque nightmare at the best of times, let alone when they’re busy changing givens into variables. 

At the same time, I think I unwittingly managed to solve it for myself:  one day I turned the computer on and there was a screen showing with the option to block the Accept/deny decision on Local Storage, so since that was what was refusing to react, thus halting the operation, I blocked it.  Result.  Don’t understand how or why, but she’s working.

Sorry to be unable to add to your knowledge base, mate, but be assured that your advice is always worth a fig!  Plainly, you know what you’re doing, but more important, you’re a nice bloke.  Good man yourself!

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Actually, John, in the end you added quite a bit to my knowledge base.  Thanks for writing.  Good luck, and Happy Computing!