(FORTUNE Magazine) – HO-HUMMERS OF THE YEAR

And now, the moment you have possibly not been waiting for: Keeping Up's sixth annual dog-days salute to the most boring headlines of the year (the one that began last September). To qualify for the summertime list of unstunners below, a headline must instantly signal that the adjacent story line will be surprise-free and guaranteed not to require any ideational reconfigurations or second thoughts about the state of play on Mother Earth, unless, of course, you were assuming that swamp sewage treatment would solve all planetary problems.

SWAMP SEWAGE TREATMENT IS NO PANACEA --Toronto Star, February 17

NOT ALL DEMOCRATS ALIKE --Arizona Republic, June 6

WELFARE PROGRAMS RIFE WITH FRAUD --Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, October 3

TOO EARLY TO END DRUG FIGHT IN COLOMBIA --Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, March 28

CASTRO CALLS FOR END TO DEFECTIONS --Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 12

HILLARY CLINTON TRIES NEW IMAGE --Calgary Herald, November 28

COLLEGE DRINKING A STUBBORN RITE, STUDY SHOWS --Chicago Sun-Times, March 18

CAMP GIVES TEENS SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT --Durham Herald-Sun, May 12

GROWTH, PROGRESS BRING MORE TRAFFIC --Greensboro News & Record, March 5

MANY INVESTORS SUFFER FROM BAD TIMING, STUDIES SHOW --Dallas Morning News, January 24

LIFE TOUGHER AFTER LAYOFFS, STUDY SHOWS --Anchorage Daily News, January 4

BOND INVESTORS FASTEN EYES ON INTEREST RATES --Christian Science Monitor, July 12

BEN & JERRY TAKE STAND ON SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY --USA Today, April 30

UNDERLYING HATREDS FUEL TENSIONS IN CHECHNYA --Baltimore Sun, January 20

AFL-CIO OFFICIAL VOWS RENEWED DRIVE TO ORGANIZE --Chicago Sun-Times, March 6

FLEA PROGRAM FOR CATS IS NO PANACEA --Rocky Mountain News, February 3

THE MONTH THAT WAS

ACT I: VIRTUAL KITTENS. Hey, pal, ever heard of Catz? Neither had the present scrivener until a month ago, when grandson Misha showed up at our East Side Manhattan abode with this software, whose unique selling proposition is virtual pets--kittens that prance around only on the monitor, thereby obviating the need for their 11-year-old owners to clean up messes. Or something like that. So we loaded Catz and instantly discovered that (a) it requires 256 colors when running in Windows 3.1, while (b) our snazzy Dell XPS Pentium 120 generated only 16 colors in 3.1, even though (c) the factory-installed setup should have made possible as many as 65 million colors. Up to this point, the 16-color limitation had been nema problema, as they say in Serbo-Croatian, but now the hue dearth was clearly critical. So we adjusted the Windows display settings to 256 colors--and had a premonitory glimmer of evil when this produced major distortions on the screen, which now looked as though one were viewing it through a coarse fishnet.

ACT II: THE VOICE OF KHANH. Next step: tense two-hour conversation with Dell tech-support guy Khanh, who checked and rechecked the settings, video drivers, and whatnot and found nothing to explain the fishnet effect but ended up suspecting a virus and suggested that we download an anti-virus program called IRIS. Sure enough, it found the Form virus on the hard drive. Form, as we later learned, gets its kicks by attacking the boot sector and producing an odd clicking sound on the 18th of each month. IRIS got rid of it, but in the course of trying to exit from this program, your klutzy servant somehow deleted 15 applications.

ACT III: INSTALLATION FOREVER. All of which led one to think big: to decide that with a lot of stuff needing to be reinstalled anyhow, it would be clever now to make the long-awaited move to Windows 95. So we visited the local Electronics Boutique, bought the Windows 95 upgrade, also bought Norton AntiVirus (each around $90), and installed both without incident but discovered in the process that the Form virus had infected not only the Dell hard drive but hundreds of other diskettes in the study as well. Nortonian detoxification was a major event the next day. As the hours wore on, however, we found ourselves hubristically declaring victory over the PC until--aargh!--it suddenly refused to obey a simple command: to exit DOS and return to Windows. Typing win at the C prompt produced a "bad command or file name" message. Not being able to think of any other way to get into Windows 95, we went back to the 13 upgrade diskettes, installed the system anew--and found ourselves again confronting the fishnet screen. By now we knew how to get past it: reboot the system with the Windows 95 startup disk and hit F8 when "loading Windows 95" glides into view, which gives you the option of getting into Safe Mode, where you can go to the control panel and rejigger the display settings to pretend that all you want is 16 colors, at which point the screen starts looking okay again. Assuming that things were now copacetic, we were undone when, the next day, the PC regressed, again ignoring all commands to move from DOS to Windows.

ACT IV: THE VOICE OF KEN. So we called the Microsoft "priority" help line ( $35 "per incident") and had a long talk about it all with Ken, a smart guy who took us through an involved procedure, featuring the DOS attrib command, which "resysses the disk" and gets Windows up and running. Ken observed, however, that something was obviously causing the system to keep falling off the hard drive. Uncertain whether we had a hardware or software problem, he suggested going back to Dell and demanding, for openers, that they get us up to 256 colors.

ACT V: LUGGING AND PLUGGING. The Dell tech supporter we spoke with next day seemed a bit grouchier than most of his colleagues, but he took us through the usual drill, leading, predictably, to the fishnet screen. The guy seemed persuaded that we had a hardware problem but unsure whether it centered on the video card or the monitor. He asked whether, perchance, we had another monitor in the house that could be tested with the XPS 120, and we unwisely allowed that we did. This led to a sequence in which an out-of-shape columnist with essentially zero mechanical aptitude disconnected the new 17-inch monitor and pantingly lugged an old 14-inch monitor from the other end of the apartment. The tape of his transaction with Dell--by now we were recording all tech-support chats--becomes a bit embarrassing at this point. The Dell guy kept telling us to plug the 14-inch monitor into the back of the computer, and we kept stating that we just couldn't see any available outlet for the plug to go into. Eventually he gave up and stated that next day we would get a new video card installed. After we hung up, it became clear why that monitor outlet was so hard to find. It seems that in disconnecting the 17-inch monitor, we had unplugged the cable from the wall outlet--but left the other end still in the computer. Nobody's perfect, right? Anyhow, next day, as promised, Dell's New York service company delivered and installed the new video card, eliminating the fishnet screen and affording 256 colors (or more, if desired) on a machine running perfectly. Fabuloso.

ACT VI: WAITING FOR MOTHER. Except that the perfection lasted only 12 hours, at which point we once again tried moving from DOS to Windows and...again ran into the fishnet screen. So it was back to Dell again, this time represented by obviously brainy Olivier, who had Mr. Customer take the cover off the PC, pull out and then plug back every card in sight, and also try out things with the 14-inch monitor, which we now knew how to plug in. (It too showed the fishnet effect.) Summing things up that Friday afternoon, Olivier said firmly that the problem was hardware, not software, and that Dell would send and install a new motherboard on Monday. Cheered by the sense that we were getting down to fundamentals, we eagerly awaited this delivery and were stunned to find that, when it came, it was not a motherboard at all, just another video card. Once again, the new card seemed to do the trick. But later that night, just before sacktime, we strolled into the study to check on the PC's mood and found that turning it on generated an error/terror message from Norton AntiVirus telling us to turn off the computer and restart it only with Norton's "rescue" disk. We did that, and when the machine came back on, Windows was unavailable and all the PC had to say was "non-system disk or disk error." What a downer.

ACT VII: MIRACLE MIKE. Onward, or is it backward, to the Dell help line, now sending Mike up to bat. He put us through the usual tests, then forcefully opined that the problem was software, not hardware, that the C drive must be massively corrupted, and that the solution was to erase everything on it and start over. We mentioned that some of his colleagues had said the problem was hardware, not software, and Mike said he begged to differ with them. He left one feeling he is probably right; in any case, one had no other ideas. So ... next day we did the deed: an fdisk of the hard drive, followed by a format. Then we set out to reinstall Windows 95 once again and, whoops, got a reminder that the disks we had acquired from Electronics Boutique were an upgrade, not a complete program--which is what a fellow needs when he has a virginal C drive staring at him. The bad news at the boutique was that the complete Windows 95 program cost around $200. We glumly paid this tariff, took the package home, and were instantly consternated to find that it contained not the usual shrink-wrapped diskettes but a bunch of diskettes loose in the box. Hmm. When we tried to install them anyway, they generated an error message pointedly stating that the diskettes had been used before and could not be run again. Hmm again. So we stormed back into Electronics Boutique, registered deep dubiety about the store's distributors, got a fast refund with no arguments, and ventured downtown to CompUSA to get the complete Windows 95. It loaded painlessly, although we were later irked and bewildered to discover that our setup lacked a Solitaire game. Fortunately, Tuan, on Microsoft's help line, showed us how to retrofit this feature--a hugely notorious time-waster--from Disk 8.

Mike was obviously right. The PC has been problem-free since we took his advice and erased the hard drive. What initially corrupted it remains a mystery. As does one's inability to find backups for some files, e.g., TaxCut data files. If we are never audited, their loss will be nema problema.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Mary Lawrence Wathen