It is the first day of school and I am going to...

...destroy the Rosetta Stone headset.

Now that I finally figured out how to get the course started for both girls, it was time to set up the headset. There was a handy card that came in the box that showed, step by step, how to accomplish this objective in an easy A, B, C format.

I went along smoothly until I got to the point where I had to speak the words "One....two....three....four.....five...." slowly into the microphone. From that point, no matter what I did, all the Rosetta Stone software would do was taunt me with a short, sharp sentence "AN ERROR HAS BEEN DETECTED!" in big, bold red words.

So I went into the control panel to see if there was anything that needed to be reconfigured so that the computer and the software would recognize the headset and microphone, allowing a young student of Spanish to listen and speak.

I followed all the instructions on the card provided, halting at the point where I was supposed to "Make sure the Select checkbox under Microphone is checked."

Okay, and that would be....where?

There IS no checkbox under Microphone. Mostly because there is no Microphone.

So I called Tech Support again and went through their entire system ("Thank you for calling Rosetta Stone, the world's most widely-used foreign language software! If you know your party's extension, please enter that number now. If you would like to place an order with Rosetta Stone, please press one now. If you'd like to speak to a support technician, please press two now...") so that I could be put on hold again, only this time, the phone actually rang! I was very excited until a canned female voice spoke up and said, "Hello! The number you're trying to reach is busy! Please call again!"

And then that....that.....[I am mentally deleting any word I might ordinarily use, for fear that I'll get an irate telephone call from my mother, the one who thinks that the f-word is "fart"]...person directed me straight back to the opening system ("Thank you for calling Rosetta Stone, the world's most widely-used foreign language software! If you know your party's extension, please enter thatnumber now. If you would like to place an order with Rosetta Stone, please press one now. If you'd like to speak to a support technician, please press two now....")

I'd like to add another sentence to that opening spiel: "If you wish you'd never bought Rosetta Stone and enrolled your children in a Spanish homeschool co-op class, please press aitch-ee-double hockey sticks now."

I think I'm going to wind up calling Pat, who will probably be very nice and come over during his lunch hour or something and accomplish in two minutes what it has taken me two HOURS to do, which will make me feel both guilty and dumb. Which will make me go into the kitchen and eat three brownies in a furtive manner, carefully folding back the aluminum foil covering them so that it doesn't give me away in a tell-tale rustle.