You're not supposed to bring work home, but...

Internet's been out at work since Friday afternoon. They finally discovered today that someone bumped a wire in the back room, so it's fixed (the phone company never quite managed to send a tech). And now our home modem lost its configuration, so we're back to the dialup for a couple of days.

IOW, see you later.

Saying nothing

With the exception of a trip to the grocery store and some brief helping with dinner, I spent pretty much the whole day trying to get my computer to boot Windows when Windows is selected from the boot menu.

I have not yet succeeded in doing so, and I don't have anything nice to say about the process.

The end.

The classic "labor saving device" story

I have stuff I could post about tonight - sending 645 faxes at work (really), meeting a very charming (and tiny) little gecko, the video game I've been playing lately. But I didn't feel like writing about any of that, and when I walked into the bedroom the cat was all spread-eagledy on the bed and I took her picture and was going to post that.

Only, when I went to get my camera card reader out of my purse, the camera card was still in it. Meaning that the three or four photos I just took are stored on the camera's internal memory.

The whole reason I have a card reader in the first place is that my camera doesn't play well with others, so when I hook it up to a computer, the computer whistles tunelessly and looks at the ceiling, and never ever acknowledges that anything so lowly as an uncouth little digital camera might be connected to its USB port.

I tried it on Bob's computer but it still didn't work, and I haven't been able to figure out how to transfer the photos from the internal memory onto the memory card, from whence I would be able to retrieve them.

Bob suggested re-installing the camera software on the computer, which is an excellent idea even given that computers used to read the camera without ever having it installed in the first place. Technology being the crafty beast that it is, we figured it was worth a shot, so Bob downloaded the driver.

Or tried to.

It froze up after downloading 55 out of the 42 MB of the file, so he gave up on that and I set out to look for the actual installation CD, which I remembered seeing during the move. Of course, I remembered seeing it in a place other than my One True Drawer of computer stuff and CDs, so I went off seeking that other place amongst the 65 cubic feet of stuff stored in the 50 cubic feet of space under the bed.

I didn't find it.

Although I did find a box of stuff I could probably reduce to a small stack of papers if I decide to get into it tomorrow, and I have a pretty good idea of where the CD may actually be, if only I felt like moving all our tools and spare plastic bags from off the container in which it may or may not be lodged.

So I can't resort to a cute kitty photo for an easy post tonight :(

Now what am I going to write about?

Eventful

Today I got my NC Driver's License Out of State Renewal by Mail packet and it all looks doable. Mostly just forms to fill out, and I have to get a local vision test.

Then Bob called to tell me the DSL guys were going to be calling me for directions, which they did within minutes. Thing was, Bob was supposed to go out and meet a friend of a friend of his who is new to Costa Rica and not reachable by phone. We weren't sure what to do about that, but we knew we weren't going to miss the DSL over it.

Happily, the guy showed up sooner than we feared, and took less time than we thought, and he got to the appointed meeting place long before the acquaintance-to-be did anyway.

I was going to go meet them both after work, but as I was walking out to the car, a government inspector dude showed up and had to be dealt with, so by the time I actually did manage to leave, it was too late to meet the new friend.

And then we came home and I marveled at the DSL and played The Sims and Bob went to work and now he's home, the end.

Discovery of the day

I had an excellent day today.

Meaning, I used Excel for almost everything I had to do at work.

I discovered that it's pretty easy to update an old spreadsheet to include the 8th digit in the phone numbers (Costa Rica added a digit last year) by inserting a column and then pasting in a formula that adds 20,000,000 to the old number.

Formulas and mass pasting are a good thing, given that it's a 645-row spreadsheet, and each row includes two to four phone numbers.

Or not dialup

We tried the 900 number for dialup last night, but neither computer could communicate with its modem. They've both been formatted since either was last asked to do anything modem-y, so we're figuring they probably lack drivers. I've downloaded some at work here, and we'll have another go later on.

Also, and unrelatedly, this is a presidential election year in Costa Rica and I heard a political ad on the radio this morning:

Voiceover: Who are you voting for this year?

Citizen #1: Eh, what's the difference? I'm voting for the least worst.

Citizen #2: I don't like any of them. I'm voting for the least worst.

Citizen #3: Politicians are all the same. I'm voting for the least worst.

Voiceover: Fishman. The least worst.

I want to call it a light at the end of the tunnel, but it just doesn´t feel like one right now.

So I went down to the phone company just now to tell them I wanted DSL on my brand spankin´ new phone line.

My phone company branch of choice is in a grocery store, in a mall. Suffice to say, there was a line.

But it was moving. I seemed to advance about three feet every 10 minutes, and that´s progress. People kept leaving the line and rejoining others in the line in front of me though, and somehow after half an hour I still calculated that I was about 7th in line.

Anyway, it was eventually my turn, and I went up to the window trepidatiously (it is TOO), well aware that they could ask me for documents I didn´t have on me, or even things that I can´t necessarily access without some significant effort.

Like, for instance, a valid ID card, but that´s another story.

So, she didn´t ask me for anything I couldn´t produce (although I did meekly accept a warning about the ID card - what´s the point of Immigration issuing automatic extensions and extra years on the card, and renewal appointments a year in the future, if nobody thinks the document that Immigration faxes me to that effect in fact means anything at all?) But I´m not here to talk about Immigration.

Ahem.

She didn´t ask me for anything I couldn´t produce, but she did say that she can´t actually put in an application for DSL on that line because the work order is still open. Something about coming in less than a week after the thing was physically installed.

But she had a solution: She took my application and kept it to the side (in, I couldn´t help but notice, an otherwise empty folder that she then placed at the very bottom of the stack on the bottom tray of her three-tiered Inbox), and as soon as the work order is closed (within a week), she´ll process the DSL application. She even gave me a blank work order for when the application goes through, and said she´d call me with the number when she had one, and I´ll write the new work order number on the blank work order and post it in my window.

And then proceed to wait A MONTH.

*Sigh*

Coming to you live from my second-favorite booth at our favorite Internet café....

As I was saying...

Pursuant to last night's post, this:


is not a happy monitor.

Well, THAT'S never happened before.

So we spent most of the day playing the Harry Potter game (it took the three of us most of the day to get Julia's Harry past the Flipendo level) and drawing temporary tattoos on each other. (Well, okay. Mostly it was me drawing them on everyone. Robin got a butterfly and Julia got a parrot and I got a purple gecko.)

And then while I was cooking dinner they started calling from the living room, but I was all cooking eggs and not about to leave them to go look at the computer, and when I finally did, it turned out something had...happened.

The entire display was rotated 90º clockwise. And the children were still playing the game.

I put an end to that, took them in the kitchen and fed them dinner, then came back out to see what there was to see. I posted a jokey little complaint on Facebook, then restarted the computer to fix the problem.

Except.

It didn't fix. Windows came up and said, "Hey, your resolution and color depth are pretty low, how's 'bout I fix that for ya?" And I said sure, and it did. But apparently Windows had no issue with the whole having-to-crane-your-neck-90º-to-the-right-in-order-to-get-your-hand-eye-coordination-to-work-enough-to-put-the-mouse-where-you-want-it thing.

I tried a few things, complained on Facebook again, and eventually went for help. Bob came up and tried a few things, then helped me turn the monitor on its side (which looked weirder than you'd think - I took a picture but I don't feel like downloading it right now) and then he went downstairs to Google it for me.

Then he came back upstairs and fixed it, yay, the end.

Too technical and not technical enough, all at once

Overall, I like my bank.

It's one of the leading ones in Costa Rica, so there are branches (and ATMs) in any town of any size. There's a branch two blocks from the girls' school, and I pass about three more on my way to work every day. I can check balances and pay utility & Internet bills online, and I can transfer money to other peoples' accounts (like the girls' school or the landlady), all from the comfort of my very own computer.

Recently, I needed to add a new favorite to my account so I could send money to someone for the first time - to pay for this here hard drive, as a matter of fact. When I tried to, it said the bank was introducing a new layer of security, and that I would need to purchase a special "token" thingy (essentially, a random password generator) and activate it in order to proceed. I was able to use the points I accumulate by paying my bills online in order to pay for the thing, but I still had to go in to the bank to pick it up.

Now.

This bank can let me do all that online and without, in my experience, any real errors. But, also in my experience, they really can't manage to update my personal info, so every time I go in to do identity-based stuff, I have to bring my Costa Rican government-issued ID, as well a my three most recent passports - that's the current one, the previous one, and the one I had when I first opened the account 17 years ago.

So I paid for my token with Virtual Points, printed out the bar code thingy, gathered my IDseses, and looked up the hours for the branch at which I had chosen to pick up the token. This bank is so civilized, it even has weekend hours at some of its major branches.

Except, for all their Come And Get Your Random Password Generator Thingy Now Because We Are Awesome And High Tech, the bank did neglect to update its website when the specific branch at which I'm meant to pick up my token thingy stopped having Saturday hours. According to the guy at the coffee shop around the corner, that would have been about six months ago.

Oh, and by the way? One of our clients can't pay his bill because he can't get a token because he's out of the country, so he asked his builder here to pay it for him, and that guy went in and his local branch is out of tokens, with no word when they'll get more in.

Two final (?) updates

So the car seems to be fixed now. Or for now.

We even drove it today--Today! A Sunday!--without mishap. In addition to all the other things I've talked about doing to it over the course of things, it now also has new spark plugs and a freshly serviced radiator.

Hopefully that'll be enough to keep it happy for a good long while now.

And I got the Karmic release of Kubuntu installed on this, the formerly broken computer yesterday. I'm using my brand new 1TB (that's a terabyte - 1000 GB) hard drive, to replace the drive that got fried by lightning a couple months ago. I saw enough of Linux when Bob had that on his computer to know I wanted to try it, and with a terabyte of space, figured it was time to go ahead. We installed Windows on the disk first (per numerous suggestions in Internet forums), then ... you know what? I could spend a LOT of time explaining all of what we went through, but really what I mean is, I've got things pretty close to where I want them. I learned a lot today about the Kubuntu environment and a little bit about working with the command line, and although I still have some tweaking to do before I'll be able to boot into the Windows side of the disk, I think it's well within reach, once I figure out what the right variables are for my setup.

Boring post about nothing

The car should be ready tomorrow, so I may never get to perfect my "leaving the office at the right time to catch that first bus" technique. The bus leaves every half hour and you wouldn't think it would be rocket science, but so far I've not waited less than 20 minutes at that stop.

And, on an unrelated note, I don't suppose any of you know anything about setting up a dual boot system on a new hard drive, do you? I installed Windows, partitioned the disk and installed Linux, but now I can't access the Windows part.

Anyway, I have to go. There's Friends to watch.

Can't talk. Busy.

So, remember the Great Hard Drive Meltdown of '09?

I got my new hard drive this week and tonight I'm trying to format, partition and install it. This process is made easier by the fact that I have another computer running right next to it on the desk, and harder by the fact that I'm trying to format and partition a hard drive using a computer that currently has no (functional) hard drive or operating system.

It looks like it might work, but ... okay, this just in. It looks like it might not work.

Anyway, I'll be over here <----, messing with stuff.

Thanks everybody!

Well, that makes it unanimous - and confirms what Bob told me to begin with. Not that I didn't believe him; he does know a lot about a lot of things, after all. I just wasn't sure that current trends in women's footwear numbered among them.

And now in return, I am going to pass along a virus I got from an email at work today:

Thou hast just received the Amish Virus. Since we do not have electricity nor computers, thou art on the honor system. Please deletest all of thy files. We thank thee.

Lunchtime reading

So, the thing about solar technolology is that, while there's new research and cutting-edge stuff going on all the time, the original concepts still hold true, and the simpler systems haven't really changed that much over the years.

Or anyway, so I'm told.

As a result, there are some reference books and magazines around the office that ... well, let's just say they'd be comfortable in the presence of wine and cheese.

Sometimes I forget to bring a book to read, so I poke around the conference room to find something to flip through while I eat my lunch. Given that I'm writing this, and you're reading it, and you're pretty smart and perceptive, I'm sure you've already surmised that today was one of those days.

The magazine was about something sustainable, and it was from 1982. Now, I remember 1982. I don't think of 1982 as the distant past. On the other hand, it has not escaped my notice that people who were born in 1982 are, like, grownups now and stuff. So maybe it was a little while ago.

The teaser on the cover read, "Home Computers: Just how practical?"

It's a whole series of articles, good for any number of lunchtimes' worth of amusement. So far, I've learned that "Most personal computers can hold the equivalent of 16,000 to 48,000 words in their memories."

I'm really looking forward to a section on the next page. The one with the heading, "Are they scary?"

Again with the lists

• I have an appointment for my annual car inspection tomorrow. I could've sworn it was due in September, but when I checked the sticker it turns out it was actually supposed to be done in August. Oops. I hope it passes; the brakes have been fixed and fixed again, but they still feel a little hard first thing in the morning (go ahead, Steve). Hopefully the drive over - and, for that matter, Bob's use of the car to go to and from work earlier in the day, will get them to their "normal," and even more to the point, hopefully their "normal" is, in fact, perfectly fine.
  
  
• I've been putting the girls off watching Monsters vs. Aliens for days now - not because I don't want to watch it with them, but because I do and it's hard to work that out on school nights. We really must watch it tomorrow.
  
  
• The four of us are going on a picnic with Jan and Dan and one or more other friends this weekend. I hear there's going to be a puppy!
  
  
• I've been playing Scrabble online, via Facebook lately. It's fun and exactly the same as the table version, except for the ability to look every random word up in the dictionary instantly, leading to a higher proportion of stuff on the board that none of the players has actually ever heard of. Each player has up to 24 hours to complete a turn, so time zones aren't an issue. Yesterday I lost to a friend in Germany - curiously, and due to licensing issues, the game is avaialable to everyone in the world except those in the U.S. and Canada.
  
  
• "The sauce of least resistance" is a good phrase. It's pretty self explanatory, and it's what we had for dinner.

Got one

Well, not a do-over, exactly, but the damage has been contained.

The drive is probably toast, but Bob's brother had made him a bootable Linux CD that saved the day. You can boot from the disc on any computer and try out the operating system without installing anything at all.

My HD-less computer was looking for things to boot from, so I fed it the disc, which booted up fine.

I didn't know when I tried it whether A) The hard drive would be accessible at all, and B) Linux would be able to see files on a Windows-formatted drive, but the answer to both questions turned out to be a very happy Yes.

And Bob has a 16-GB memory stick, and it only took two trips up and down with that, and now all my files are safe on a combination of these two computers - turns out this new one only has a wee little hard drive, so all my stuff wouldn't even fit on it.

So now I need to acquire a new hard drive - we've already discovered that I can get about twice the Gigs for about half the price if I bring one in from the States (assuming the bringing itself doesn't get too costly), but I can also get one here if I get too impatient.

So: Long day, happy ending.

I want a do-over

So we had a massive lightning strike in the neighborhood and of course the power went out. The two computers downstairs just shut off, because they have surge protection but no power backup.

My computer didn't shut off, but my UPS only offers about a minute of power; just enough to save and quit and shut down, which I did.

Guess which one got fried?

Seems my computer no longer feels that it has a hard drive. Best we can figure, it was probably the cable itself. The Internet comes in by cable, and it goes through a modem and a router before it gets to the computer. But before any of that, there's a splitter to divide off the cable TV part of the cable. And that goes directly into the analog capture card so we can watch TV on the computer. Which I've done maybe six times, ever.

I don't rely on stuff on the hard drive on a day-to-day basis, but I had years' worth of old photos and documents on there. I know who to ask locally if they can salvage any of it, and of course we've got the new computer down here, but come on.

I guess it has been over two weeks since I had to spend any money on the car...

Coming to you live from our branch office four paces to the southeast and down a floor

Though we got this computer when Dad['s luggage] arrived, and we set it up the next day, this is the first time I've actually sat down to use it beyond just making sure it worked.

It seems to work just fine, although I'm afraid to get too settled in, because we're thinking a wipe & reinstall of Windows might be in order. It doesn't seem to have much on it at all, but still takes quite a while to boot up and stuff. And then there's always that Linux disc. Hmmm.

In other news, I'm trying baking soda and apple cider vinegar instead of shampoo and conditioner, respectively, and I like it very much so far.

In other other news, I DON'T LIKE BAND AIDS, yet every time I take mine off, I reopen the not-very-deep-but-somehow-deeply-vulnerable knife cut on my thumb within about 90 seconds. I'm tired of bleeding on things.

The dongle, dangled, was denied

Hmmm. That may be too catchy a title for what is, essentially, a mini rant about peripherals. Oh, well. Such is the signal:noise ratio of the Internet.

The computer sent to us by Bob's wonderful friend works perfectly, now that we've obtained the various and sundry little bits that were needed to hook all the bigger bits together.

The one remaining bit was the wireless keyboard receiver, so this afternoon I sat down to find out where and how to get one and it seems the answer is, pretty much, "that harsh buzzing sound that accompanies wrong guesses on game shows."

'Bout anyone will sell you a wireless keyboard and/or mouse with the receiver for dozens of dollars.

Nobody, but nobody, will sell you the receiver alone. Microsoft actually has a Supplemental Parts Team that they will unleash for with which to track down...uh, supplemental parts. But they won't talk to you without a proof of purchase, so...hey, there's that buzzing noise again.

I've got a borrowed regular keyboard for the meantime, and considerable motivation to either make the wireless thing work out, or find a really good deal on a local used one. Or something.