When One Door Closes...

We all know that saying, "When one door closes, another door opens." Well I am not here to preach the goodness of the universe or something divine or even good luck. Ron decided our interior doors needed repainting. Secretly, I agreed, but knew that neither one of us would undertake the task, so the cost was not something I wanted to think about. We have, after all 16 doors. In reality, there are 17, but one is hidden from view. Mind you, this is not 16 sides of doors, but 16 doors, with 32 sides. 

Ron is leaving for the US on Wednesday, June has been a slow month so far and will not be overburdening from the looks of it, which is perfectly okay with me, but that is not going to have the money pouring in either. This is the month we pay quarterly taxes to Uncle Sam in the US and I am getting a new computer. 

Okay, no, I don't need a new computer, but thankfully we do need to replace the kitchen computer reserved for guests and Ron. It is so slow, once it is turned on, you can go brush your teeth while you wait. You come back and hope it is ready, but it is still chugging along like lawn mower that has run over a tree limb. You return the bathroom and shower. Wrapped in a towel, you sneak out the the kitchen to catch a peek. It has finally reached the Windows logo screen, so you decide to get dressed in the meantime. Getting distracted in the bedroom, you decide there needs a load of wash thrown into the washer, so you do that before returning to the kitchen.

Once back in the kitchen, turning the bend to check the screen of the monitor, you see that the wallpaper is emerging, but still is like a hesitant ghost deciding on how to make a full entry. You decide to blow dry your hair. You are then rewarded with the full background photo and all of your icons are available for action. Once you click on the Firefox or Chrome icon to open the browser, you grab your cloth shopping bags and go grocery shopping. If you linger over the produce, you will be rewarded with a full screen of Firefox or Chrome when you return. Should you not pay enough time checking out the tomatoes, you just may come home disappointed. 

Ron needs another computer; he is getting mine. I am upgrading. What is amazing it that what would have cost $3,000 a couple of years ago, now will only run me $1,099. Computer sales are really down since tablets hit the market.


Weighing all of these expenses, I held a thick pillow over my face and had a primal scream before telling Ron to give the painter the green light. He spent all day here giving all of the doors a first coat. If we don't die from the paint fume asphyxiation, they will look fabulous. The problem is that they are now starting the make the window frames look shabby and in need of a new coat.


So the moral is that when one door opens, the windows are sure to follow eventually.

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School Days

Tuesday was my first day of school for this semester. I have five classes on Tuesday and five again on Wednesday. This is the heaviest schedule I have had in my ten years I started teaching here. In addition, I still have MA students who I am advising for their thesis. 


Tuesdays my classes start at 8 am:
8:00 am to 9:30 The Methodology of Writing the BA Cultural Thesis - Only 2 of the students are my advisees.
9:30 to 11:00 Race and Ethnicity in US Journalism II
11:00 to 12:30 pm Religion: Born in the USA
12:30 to 2:00 Journalism as Portrayed in US Films 
2:00 to 3:30 Library Research Methods 


Wednesdays also start early.
8:00 am to 9:30 Websites and Blogging: 21st Century Journalism
9:30 to 11:00 The Methodology of MA Cultural Studies
11:00 to 12:30 pm Introduction to Creative Writing
12:30 to 2:00 Corp-ocracy - The Corporations of Destruction
2:00 to 3:30 The Mystery Novel


My main computer is still working through the same diagnostics that it started on Tuesday when I turned it on. I have this fear that if I turn it off, it will only start from the beginning again, so I thought it best to let it play itself out. All that and ten courses; I am arranging for my funeral by the end of May. Hopefully, I will last that long.

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Computer Karma

I never have good luck with computers. I think my energy conflicts with anything electronic. This has been running for the last 36 hours. Because have four hard drives, each with a TB of storage, it is going to take another day or more, before I have to decide whether or not to go computer shopping.

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Snap, Snap, Snap!

My computer is still not fixed, but with some borrowing and planning my time right, I have finally been able to get all of my Guatemala and Belize photos uploaded. They are all waiting to be viewed at Ryan and Ron Do the World. 


I have high hopes of getting my computer back by tomorrow, so look for me soon.

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Shoulda, Oughta, Coulda

After spending the weekend reading theses, editing them, guiding the students along the way, then throwing in some essays along the way, I am not going to should all over myself by repeating "You should be reading more essays now." Bah Humbug! My blue eyes look very patriotically American: red, white, and blue. Time for a diversion.

Okay, Dell has just announced what looks to be a fun toy, the Dell Inspiron Duo convertible notebook. Looking at the specs, it is a 10.1 inch screen on a netbook, but the catch is that the lid rotates the screen making it a tablet. Way cool! Excuse me now while I write my letter to Santa.

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Window Shopping

Isn't English fun? Window shopping can mean:

1. Browsing shop windows with lust in your eyes drooling over all of the goodies we cannot afford.

2. Looking for windows to replace the windows that are not as energy efficient and need replacing

3. In the age of technology, software.

Today, I was looking behind door number 3. After spending part of Sunday going to two different malls, one with a Saturn store and the other with an Electro World, I was on the prowl for Windows 7 Professional in English. The best I could do was get a Home Premium version. If you read this blog regularly, you may recall that a couple of our guests gave me the Windows 7 Home Premium as a gift. I was and still am most appreciative and in awe over their generosity. However, we have five computers total, so one copy of the software is not enough to go around, at least not legally.  

What I decided to do was to put Windows 7 Professional on the main computer and the Home Premium upgrade on the kitchen computer. I am still reading reviews on what to do with the netbook, one laptop we only use for watching videos powered through the TV, and I just may need another copy for my school laptop. It seems that the Pro version will work better with my Windows Home Server, which feeds into the other computers, thus making a Home Group an even better option, thus sharing everything on the network that I want to share.

I have asked my students to check repeatedly, but they did not come up with anything. Well, necessity is the mother of digging deeper. I had a student who needed his thesis papers signed. I told him which malls I would be checking today if he wanted to find me. Today was the deadline for this paperwork. Amazingly, within an hour, he had a store's link where I could get any version of Windows I wanted. After signing his paper in good faith, I headed off of the beaten path to find this store in one of the outer districts. Eureka! It was true, but they do not stock anything. After placing the order today, it will be available for pick-up by Wednesday. No money was transacted until delivery. The kicker is that it is $100.00 cheaper here than what I could find on the Internet for online stores in the States. I did ask more than once is this was the full package, not just an upgrade. Their English was superlative, but I will examine the box carefully before handing over the money.

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Frustration Knows No Limits

I have had the computer guys here so often, they are thinking of renting one of our rooms. They could not seem to figure out why my cable box and router goes out more often than Brad Pitt did in his twenties. Finally, they decided it had to be the cable box and they called the cable company to fight the point. Each time I called they said they ran diagnostics from the office and all was well. The cable man cometh yesterday, worked at the junction box on the third floor, and then replaced my cable modem. All seemed to be smooth Internet surfing until last night when it went out again. Perhaps the router needed to be rebooted to recognize the new cable box. Today, all seemed fine until an hour ago when it showed I was connected, yet I was not getting anywhere I wanted to go on the Internet highway. Not even a yield sign came into view, just stop, and in stop trying, because there is no connection. The cable man said it may be because the box is on the third floor and the connection has to travel too far to reach my computer. Ah, duh! I cannot imagine we are the only people one floor away from the junction box. Wouldn't logic dictate that a solution needs to be found?

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Liking Waiting for a Birth

Getting new techie stuff for me is beyond exciting, but the wait reminds me of waiting for my brother to be born. The anticipation was great, but the end result was a bit of a let down. The tech was supposed to be here at 10am. I had everything backed up and ready to fly into the next level of Windows with arms spread wide planning to soar. My mobile phone rang since when the guy left yesterday, our landline, which is also cable stopped working. We have a call into the company to get that repaired now too. The labor time was premature, he has to stay at the office until 1:30pm. At 3:30, he show us. Having flunked yesterday's lessons, he had the audacity to state that this was going to be simple. All he had to do was set up the server. At 3:45, we gave him coffee. When the clock hit 4:25, it was ice water. The temperature out was 92F. By 6:30, we offered him a vodka and tonic. When it turned 8pm, we were thinking of including him in our dinner plans. At 8:30, we were considering making up a bed for him, but we are fully booked, so perhaps a spot on the kitchen floor? As it turns out, the hard drive that I used to back up everything I needed from the old computer was too outdated for the new computer, so could not be installed. He had to run to a computer shop to get cables to allow me to use the old drive as an external one. Then there was the installation of the server software on three more computers. What we have now is a system where guests will be able to video stream our movie collection onto their laptops in the privacy of their room. That is of course, after I have the time to load all of the 700+ movies onto the server. For now, I am reinstalling all of my programs under Windows 7, which has not been too much of a hassle. I guess having had to reformat the computer on a semi-annual basis in the past has increase my speed in doing it. What I hate the most about the reformatting is all of the programs that I bought online and have saved registration keys for, but when you try to reinstall them, the keys no longer work. This happened for three programs that I use continually. I write to the support and hope to hear back one day. Kudos to one company: Slysoft Software - www.slysoft.com I have three of their programs, which I use almost daily. They not only responded the same day I wrote, but they provided me with new keys. They thought the old keys may have been corrupted. Bless them. Hats off to MailWasher Pro, the program that filters out my spam in the e-mail. When I could not get the program to install, they wrote me back asking questions. Until I retrieve it, I have 759 e-mails to sort through. If you don't hear from me soon...

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This Is Going to Be Easy

"This Is Going to Be Easy" are the famous words that every computer technician who enters here says, followed by "I can have this done in no time." Hours later when they are looking at the pictures of their wife and kids to remember their faces, pining to be with them again, they realize they spoke off of the cuff. I am sure those words never leak from their lips ever again when approaching my door. Two days ago, the tech brought my new computer, my Windows Home Server, and new router. After an hour of struggling like a hostage bound and gagged, he finally called it quits placing a phone call to the cable company for Internet assist. According to the company, I had five computers hooked directly up to the cable box, but in reality there has only been one. The others are WiFi, so don't count. Around more rounds than a champion tennis match, they finally agreed to disagree, but resolved the issue regardless. Computer installed, router installed, WiFi working on all computers except the desktop sitting directly under the router. Duh! Back to square one. By 7:30 pm, the tech starts singing "Release me, let me go..." but does promise to return tomorrow to finish up. That is what all of my dates in high school said too; I should have learned by now. If I were smarter, I would have kept his bike hostage.

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More Humor

Yes, I have better things I could be doing, but I just returned from the dentist and am having a meltdown. Yesterday was a yet another medical doctor appointment. Fast and efficient, but another Rx to have filled and two more weeks of waiting. It is tough getting older. I am waiting for my new computer to be delivered today with Windows Home Server. All five of our computers will be hooked up to the server and then I will load over 700 movies over time onto it. Then guests can watch movies on their laptop in their room. Now for the humor. Note: I have no idea where these originated, so am not purposefully infringing on anyone's copyright.

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The Heat and Computers

If the heat is getting to you, imagine what your computer is going through with only one little fan to cool its insides. The heat is definitely doing strange things to my computers. It may or may not be the heat though with the desktop computer having had a tech here replacing all of the innards part by part. Yet, the Internet connection is still a problem. Funny, the WiFi works fine for all of the other computers here both resident and visiting. A week back, we upgraded our cable TV to a DVDR subscription to get more channels in English. We now have a grand total of five. Do I hear a big WHOOP? When the repairman was here, he did some stuff with the wiring, which then led him to my Internet modem. When he left, it was white lightening. Today, it is slower than getting mud out of silk. Trying to work on the Toshiba laptop, I have been back and forth between the coffee table and the desktop. It is too hot keeping the laptop on my lap and if I set it on anything non-porous, it shuts itself off. I have a fan blowing on the power cord to keep it cool, but finally put it on a bag of ice wrapped in a dish towel. If I am not electrocuted, I will get my shopping chapter completed today. If I am electrocuted, it will go on hold indefinitely. There is a silver lining. On Wednesday, I get my brand new computer with a four core processor, my Windows Home Server will be installed, and a WiFi router with two antennas strong enough to project through lead walls. The best of it is it will have Windows 7 on it. Ah, you say, Windows 7 is not out yet. This is the Windows 7 Release Candidate, which can be downloaded until August with a key. It will work until March 2010 at which time I will have the regular version to replace it with. The only down side is having to reinstall all of the programs now and then again later with the full version. The price one pays for technology.

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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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Dear, Dear Students and Other Musings

Due to some poor note taking and short term memory loss, I ended up with twelve thesis students this semester. The average is two, the usual maximum is four. How could I do this to myself? Well, it is a systems problem. They must turn in their title, which is engraved in stone, one year ahead of time. As they meandered into my office at various times, I said yes, but not really making notes of the semester they were planning on the actual work. I arranged my other course workload accordingly, when the reality hit me. All of the essays I had assigned were pushed back on each syllabus, due after April 1st. The theses would all be due March, so it would give me time to focus on the essays without stress. The university had other ideas. They too extended the deadline for thesis submission to April 15th for the first time in my seven year tenure. Why? Do they need a valid reason? Surely not! Two of the twelve were great achievers and had their thesis completed to my level of perfection by January. That left ten to chase. Each student I advise gets a calendar of due dates. They have to submit five pages a week and meet with me once every two weeks. Rules are made to be broken and they did. I still have four Masters thesis students struggling to make the deadline. Two others are BA students and their deadline is May 1st, so the suffering still had time to fester. Thursday, I had a computer technician here for issues beyond my scope of knowledge. I felt justified in calling him in when it took him five hours to resolve some issues and he will return the first of the week for others. Handing over a wad of cash was satisfying in the fact that these were not simple band-aids I could have solved with some critical thought and Google. This put me yet farther behind in a writing assignment that has been waiting for my attention. Hating procrastination, this has been eating at me knowing it needs my attention. Even blogging has taken a backseat. Yesterday, putting other students at an arms length, I started the assignment, but first had to review a list of 222 restaurants to be certain they still existed. With the restaurant culture being what it is here, the life span of a restaurant is usually death within the first year. Often, another restaurant will move into the same space, spend a fortune remodeling, even keep the same phone number, only to repeat the process nine months to a year later. There seems to be no learning from history and demographics...they have no clue what they are. One area had four Indian restaurants within two blocks. Three are now history. So from the list, an overwhelming number of them have gone by the wayside. The Hungarian Restaurant Association predicts that with the economic crisis, 30% of all restaurants in the country will close up shop within 2009. That is not to say that some optimistic, dare I say 'fool' will believe he or she can beat the odds and succeed. If nothing, it does bring continual variety to the food culture, but it is a horror when writing for travel publications. My first Frommer's book, three restaurants went out of business after the manuscript was submitted, but after it went to press and before it came out in stores. The total sum cost of reviewing those restaurants was over $100. of wasted money.

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Back to the Future

When I booted up the computer this morning, it immediately wanted to install Internet Explorer 8, though I have had it already. I let it go, but it needs to do a restart afterward. The computer would not restart. I tried getting to the Task Manager, which opened, but displayed on the screen frozen as a Floridian in summer in San Francisco. Nothing! I had to manually shut down, trying to start in the last known good configuration. It would not boot. I tried it in Safe Mode to do a System Restore, but SR would not even open. The CPU was 100%, so it was a no go. I text messaged the computer tech, while I painstakingly did my Voodoo computer ritual, performed my most eloquent pagan technology dance, and lit candles around the hard drive, with worry and rosary beads in hand. Why leave anything to chance? Forty minutes later, something gave the boot the boot and it started up. I was able to do a system restore to last night after Balazs fixed the connections. Thankfully, I had set a restore point then. Perhaps having a typewriter, a ream of paper, and carbons would be great back-up insurance.

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Electro Man Strikes Again

After weeks of hearing Ron whine about how slow the kitchen computer was downloading Comedy Central, I gave in and called out computer tech. Admittedly, the last straw was the fact that my network connection would suddenly disappear, leaving me in the black hole of reality with no access to cyberspace. Once you have tasted cyber-surfing, there is a point of no return. Our adopted child, nephew, student, side-kick, whatever his moniker du jour happens to be, Balazs came over to get things off of his "To Do" list. First, go with me to the frame shop to have three lithographs re-matted. This had been on my list since we bought them four years ago. Check it off! Done, they will be ready on Wednesday. Two, go to Office Depot to buy a new computer chair. After testing chairs that ranged in cost from $50-300.00, I settled for one that felt comfortable, was not unreasonable and did not lop to one side like my current chair. I thought they had free delivery if you spent a certain amount. Balazs thought I was bringing him to carry the chair home. I really needed his translator skills to find out color options and assorted picky matters. They indeed have free delivery, plus for $4.00 extra, they will assemble the chair, which just happened to be on sale. After I paid, the security officer came up to us and said something to Balazs. I thought she wanted to inspect my bag. She took me over to a large cardboard box, asking that I close my eyes. I had to reach in and grab a 'prize'. It was a magazine in Hungarian, a prize for Balazs. Having given me the router, B-man felt responible for getting it fixed. He worked on it for three hours, before we made him stop to have dinner with us. After dinner, he finally got it working properly. I e-mailed out tech guy to cancel. This is why we love our dear Balazs.

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What Has Been Keeping Me Busy

Sometimes it is not the complicated things that keep a person extra busy. The little things can be annoying time consumers.

My new phone, the Nokia N96 is all I could have hoped for, but... It seems all of my contacts from the old phone were never saved onto my Sim card. What that means is that all 300+ contacts have to be reentered into the new phone. I have looked everywhere and have not found a way to import my contacts from a file, for example, my Gmail address book.

One other problem. I can make calls, but when someone calls me, they receive a message that the number is not working. This is not a phone issue, so I will have to make a trip to my provider to figure this out.

For our university, there is a teaching load calculator we have to fill out at the beginning of one semester for the previous semester. I usually am really good about getting this done right away, but did not get to it until today. None of my BA classes were listed. I have no control to make changes, just add in the numbers of students I gave grades to. Even ignoring the BA students, I get an error message each attempt. Only the department secretary has control over this, but it seems it is beyond her time limit to make changes. We will see how this plays out.

Speaking of the department secretary, I bought her a plant today and made a "You Are Highly Appreciated" sign. The university let my health insurance expire in November. I did not know it until I went for my flu shot. It took until yesterday for it to be resolved. The secretary had to return to the health office five times. Each time, they wanted different information, which they had not told her on the previous trip. Finally, she had me bring in everything I had, photocopied it all, had me sign each sheet, took everything she needed from the Dean's office and I now have my card again.

The Writing Center, I created at the university with the ten computers I was able to get donated has been a blessing for the new courses I am teaching this semester. Only six of them were able to be hooked up to the Internet. This made teaching a blogging course difficult. After discussing it with our computer person, he stated that for 15,000 Huf, he could get a router to connect the remaining four computers, but that the department had no money. I gave it to him, thinking in a week, I would have the router and full functioning computers. Two weeks later, he told me he ordered it. The week after that he said they sent the wrong kind. If I had known, I would have gone down to the store and bought it myself. Today, he e-mailed me. He has the correct one and will set it up. Different people and cultures have such different senses of time.

On a brighter side, I finished my first assignment for the NileGuide at www.nileguide.com. It was a smallish one, but I had some good fun working on it. It was quite challenging finding the names of all of the districts in Budapest, but as it turns out, not all of them are named, just numbered. The best part is I get to continually review all that I love about this city repeatedly.

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Qwerty

If the name Qwerty rings some bells in the back of your memory, look down at your keyboard's top row of letters from the left. This clever name is the store where we bought the computer for the kitchen for guest's to use. When we had the seemingly fatal black, not blue screen that said "Opps! Something is definitely wrong here!" we called the ex-pat American computer repair guy. His solution was simple. Haul it off, diagnose it and create a service plan. We allowed him to cart our box off to his office, but there was a niggling thought in the back of my mind. Hmmmm....the computer was not that old. Could it possibly still be under warranty? The strange thing here is that you have three business days after making a purchase to return it to the store. Even within those three days, the allowances for the return are limited to the item not functioning. Changing your mind about a purchase is as worthy of a refund as hoping to win the lottery without buying a ticket. You bought it, you own it. You want to return it? Break it within three days or you are out of luck. After three days, you are destined to bring or ship the item to the "Service Center" for repair or replacement. Guarantees can very from thirty days to a year, but what is guaranteed is that the service center will not be anywhere convenient. With all of this in mind, we had to debate the pros and cons of trying to find our guarantee for Qwerty or let our fellow patriot have a go at it. Since he charges 5,000 Huf an hour, we opted to rescue the computer, bring it to the store and see what happened. Our fellow American still charged us for an hour's time for coming to get the suffering patient. Ron took the computer to the store, sadly admitting we could not find the receipt. They looked it up on their computer (amazingly) and found to our delight that he guarantee was for a year and six months. Holy motherboard! Which was exactly the problem, the motherboard stopped being the intended nurturer and needed replacing. So in laymen terms, our mother abandoned us and we have been thrown out for adoption only to now have a surrogate mother...board. It took two weeks for them to discover our faulty lineage, but heck, it was free. We are up and running yet again. Thank you Qwerty, you have won our allegiance.

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My Computer and I

My computer and I should have the best relationship ever. We spend more time together than a married couple who are partners in business with a home office. I do my best to treat it kindly. I show my appreciation for its many talents on a daily basis. Yet, like a spiteful friend, it turns on me on occasion; it really hurts when this happens. Yesterday was one of those times. We were working together seemingly without any qualms with each other, and then, it turned on me without warning. In the little tray at the bottom right hand side of the screen where the running programs are shown, a new little icon appeared. What caught my attention was the fact that it was flashing. It had the shape of a little computer with tiny yellow balls on either side. After I realized my buddy was not declaring its gender, I clicked on the icon for identification purposes. What I received in return was a message that is was trying to make contact with the IP host. For the last two weeks, I have been getting any annoying message on the Internet stating that my connection was reset by the host and I had to try again. This was consistent across platforms. The same issue arose with Firefox, IE 8, Outlook Express, and my Incredimail program, so I could presume that it was not software related. So, I had to break down and call my cable company to have it checked out. After listening to three minutes of instructions in Hungarian, I was finally informed that to speak to an English speaking operator, press 7. The last time I called it was 'press 8'. I think they change this periodically to confuse me. I pressed 7 and a lovely apologetic voice told me that all reps were busy and though my call was important, I could press 2 and leave a voice mail message and they would call me back. Being an untrusting soul with these promises, I waited...and waited...and waited. Five minutes later, I did get an actual person who asked for the usual information: my account number, the account name, the account address, my mother's maiden name, my place of birth, religious affiliation, political bent, phobias that have been cured and those that I still suffer from, and so forth. I really should record all of this information to do an instant playback whenever calling a company here to save my breath, but I never remember once off of the phone. The rep asked me to hold on while she checked my modem. I did and she did. She advised me that the modem was in perfect order, but there may be a problem with the IP, so she had to get someone from that department to check it. She asked for my phone number, the last bit of data not provide earlier so they could call me back after they checked it. When I asked how long this would take, claiming I did not want to be held hostage all day, she said within two hours. In the meanwhile, another glitch came about. The batteries in my cordless keyboard died. Now, I did have fair warning, since slamming a key ten times before getting any results is usually an indicator of something. Did I have spare batteries on hand? Nope! Ron was headed to the store, so this was put on the shopping list. Meanwhile, I tried every set of four AA batteries I could find fearful that the cable company would call back and need for me to navigate in the Network Connections or some such place. No batteries worked. One hour later, the phone rang; it was the cable company. Before the gentleman could say a word about do this or do that, I shared my dilemma. Although sympathetic, he said it did not matter since the IP was fine. It seems that it is my router that is causing the problems. They did not provide the router so it is my issue. Ugh! I hate having an issue. Ron returned with the batteries, so I thought I was set to go. The keyboard did not work. I repeatedly hit the reset button on the control and the back on the keyboard, but nothing happened. I uninstalled the software and reinstalled it. Nothing. Using the computer in the kitchen, I looked up troubleshooting for cordless keyboards. I had followed the instructions implicitly, yet still without positive results. By now, I was fuming. Buying a new keyboard was not on the agenda for the day. Ron had gone for a nap, so I decided to wait for him to get up to see if he wanted to go with me. Without a keyboard there are limited things you can do on a computer. I felt helpless and abandoned by my good friend. Pouting, I went to read the book I had started. After two chapters of being absorbed in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, I had an epiphany. The keyboard has a different antenna from the mouse. The reset button I had been hitting was the mouse reset. When I reset the correct antenna, the keyboard kicked into action.

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