Prague

This was one of those cheater weeks at the university, when there are only two teaching days due to the holiday overrun. I taught Wednesday and Thursday, done at 12:30 and ready to rock and roll. Two of our guests left this morning before I did and the others were leaving this evening two hours before we started out to the airport ourselves. We leave for Prague tonight.

Most of my time, I spent working on the computer, setting up vacation auto-responders, and answering e-mails, in between reinstalling programs and making a list of those that still needed installation.

The flight was a quick 50 minutes, yet Click4Sky, the budget offshoot of Czech Air served sandwiches and soft drinks at no charge. The driver for the B and B was waiting for us, a lovely young woman who was chatty with Ron sitting in the front seat.

When we arrived at the B and B and approached the large black metal doorway, Elena our driver, rang the bell, then said look at the animal. When we looked down, I could see something scurrying around at our feet, but could not make out what it was. When she said “I don’t know the name in English”, the word rat kept leaping to my mind. In retrospect, I am not certain why I was calm as I said it. Perhaps, I did not want it to be so. After all, who wants to be greeted by a rat where they are going to spend three nights? It suspiciously did not have a long hairless tail. Either it was not a rat or a rat that had escaped from some pharmaceutical research lab. When she opened the metal door, our new pet mate beat us inside, but this door only led to the concrete stairs leading to the house. In the light, this creature was easier to identify. It was a small hedgehog. Actually, it was more like a hedge piglet. It was so small and adorable. Before I could have any thoughts of adoption, Ron mentioned he read an article about a disease they are carrying. But can’t I just pet it? Killjoy!

The room was lovely with a large double bed, but we needed some dinner. Jitka, our hostess suggested a restaurant not too far away, but warned the kitchen closes at 10:30. As it turned out, she was misinformed, it closes at 9:30, but they had cold platters. I did manage to get a grilled sausage. The waitress must have taken pity on me.

The last time we were in Prague was 1996, in December. This balmy April night is much different.

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A Booklovers Dream

Alec was returning to install all of my programs after he put in a new network card. He arrived before I left for school, my first day back after spring break. He had an epiphany last night. Googling different issues, he found that some network cards do not play well with some routers. Their syncing time is off. Since my last router went up in smoke, this could well be the case. He picked up a router manufactured by the same company as the router. This seemed to be a match made in cyberspace. It worked. I left Alec loading programs and went to school. Zoli and the bookcases were due at 11:00. I was thrilled that the guests were out for the day for less disruption to their day, not to mention that I was going to be at school avoiding the same uproar. Guess again! When I slunk into the door at 1:00 pm, it was quiet, no pounding hammer, so whir of a drill, nothing, but Alec’s clicking fingers. Zoli postponed us until 2:00, but when he showed to install the three bookcases, they were beautiful, beyond my expectations. It had occurred to me too late that we had never discussed color. Zoli being a professional cabinet maker made them to match identically the wood of the other furniture. One was customized as I had specified with six drawers on the bottom and bookcases on top. The other two were over 6 feet high, covering the wall. I now have plenty of room for books if anyone wants to send me one, I will be please to supply an address. Alec finished up at 6:00 after I said I would finish reinstalling the dangling programs needing a search for registration codes. One difficulty of buying software online is having to write to the support staff to have them send you new download sites or codes to validate the software. Many sites will not allow you to use the old URL to download the program again after a reformat. At this point, we have three new bookcases, empty, but books strewn on our bedroom dresser and the remaining bookcase waiting patiently to find their new niche. Of course they have to be categorized and alphabetized by author’s last name, so this is not some project to start now with the computer pulling on my leg to make it feel complete again. So many projects, so little time.

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Mercury in Retrograde, My Butt

We know someone here, an American, who blames all techno problems on the Mercury in Retrograde. For me, that is every week. The computer nightmare continued for days. After Alec, the computer tech worked on the computer for five hours on Thursday, it seemed to be working fine until Sunday, when it rolled over and played dead again. Being Sunday and Monday were holidays, Alec was not available, but promised to come over Tuesday, today. He hit the door at 10:30 ready to rock and roll and take a byte out of whatever came his way. We had tickets for the theater with Michael, but that was not until 7:30 tonight; this still being my holiday, so it did not matter so much.

We had guests in both rooms; all lovely people and they managed to make friends with each other as well. In the small room was a mother who was visiting her daughter who is studying in Denmark, but both from the States. In the large room were a mother, father, and twenty-something daughter who were from the States, but the daughter lives in Munich. They were all such a joy to have around; when they saw Alec working, they commiserated and Mike, the dad in the group offered suggestions.

Alec did everything he could think of, including the Voodoo dance to the computer gods, but things just kept getting worse instead of better. His final diagnosis was to reformat the computer. It seems to me that this is a cop-out for critical thinking to stop. It is an easy way out. Reformat is the word I hate the most in the English language. Reformatting means spending two days reinstalling all of the programs I depend on, with all of the customized settings I have created for each of the programs, setting up the toolbars, and so on. Sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks to remember how I managed to arrange something in the best order for my work practices. Formatting: Them there are fighting words. Alec suggested that he wanted to take my computer to the shop, to return it the next day, with the programs installed that they could install. This meant not my monitor, since I have a swivel screen and not the printer either. My whining convinced him it was not a good idea. Perhaps barricading the door, stealing his keys, and suddenly supplying a six pack of cold beer was a determining factor too. Who knows?

If there were a worst time of year for this to happen, this is it. Students are trying to beat the deadline for finishing their thesis, there are tons of papers to read, and I, Mr. Techno have them send everything via e-mail. I need the computer now. This never fails that April is reformat the computer month. If I had a reminder on the calendar, I could start antidepressant therapy weeks before. It was formatted last April and the April before.

I begged Alec to at least get it back to where it was when it was marginally working and we would reformat it at a later time. He tried, but it was not having it. There were too many tweaks and trials attempted for it to want to return to a time in the past. Ron went to meet Michael for the play without me; I fed Alec dinner and at 10:30, he called it a night with the promise to return in the morning.

We have new bookcases coming tomorrow. Each time I walk past the existing bookcases, I grab a stack of books. We ordered new taller and wider custom bookcases to be put in and these bookcases need to be out of the way. Hence, all of the books had to disappear as well as my dysfunctional computer.

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