Cisco user has a Seinfeld flashback with a Cisco VPN client error message

Not being a Mac user, Cisconet is unaware that Cisco's VPN software "is/was notorious for its stability issues" on Apple's OS, as blogger Rob Slifka writes in his AllAboutBalance.com blog. His blog item about a recent Cisco VPN problem reminding him about a Jerry, Kramer exchange in Seinfeld's "The Maid" episode was posted within days of a post in MacWindows.com of a reader whose Cisco VPN client died after he installed Leopard 10.5.2 update . Slifka was puzzled by a Cisco VPN installation error message (he was installing the client on Vista, not Mac) which told him to uninstall a previous version of the client that wasn't even installed on his machine.

Slifka sets the scene with this dialog between Jerry and Kramer:

JERRY: What’s around you?

KRAMER: I’m lookin’ at Ray’s Pizza. You know where that is?

JERRY: Is it Famous Ray’s?

KRAMER: No. It’s Original Ray’s.

JERRY: Famous Original Ray’s?

KRAMER: It’s just Original, Jerry!

JERRY: Well, what street are you on?

KRAMER: Hey, I’m on first and first. How can the same street intersect with itself? I must be at the nexus of the universe!

Slifka's quest to install Cisco VPN client gives him a Seinfeld moment after the installer pops up the error message. He writes:

This is an upgrade from a previous version yet the installer is asking me to uninstall… itself?  I must be at the nexus of the universe!

Consider the following:

Cisco was able to detect this condition.
Cisco wrote the installer for this application.
Cisco wrote the installers for all previous versions of this application.

Perhaps Cisco, with its intimate knowledge of its own software, might be able to handle all of this for me? Isn’t this what computers are great at? Automation?

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