thises, thats, and hateful technology

Work has been consuming of late. We're getting close to a yearly deadline, so the work itself, along with the hours and energy devoted, have become more intense. On top of that, there have been some personnel rumblings, which I find quite distracting. I think the end result is for the good of all concerned, but getting through the part that just passed has also sapped some energy. Next week should be a little easier.

The good news is that we've just hired a contractor who's an old pal, someone of whom I'm very fond. It will be good to catch up with him and to work with him. And we've recently hired someone who has worked with my old pal twice now, likes and respects him a lot, and is in turn liked and respected by him. So they'll each have some company coming into our strange little world.

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My brother is about to celebrate his 40th birthday (hooray!). There was just a party for him -- a huge party that was really fun and by the water and all sorts of people were there (hooray!). I found out about it from my mother, who was breathless with excitement about it (ok). I found out about it after it happened. (booooo). I'm composing an email birthday greeting to my brother. I think I know what I'm going to say. I will send it with much love.

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My father's brother's family is organizing a family get-together to memorialize my grandmother. (This event is separate from the possible memorial service that my father may or may not be holding and which I may or may not hear about before or after it occurs, should it even happen.) Event number 1 is happening next weekend. I've been invited. So has my father (at least, that was the expressed intention, despite some hopefully temporary bad blood between dad and uncle.) Since December, Robert and I have been planning to go to the Berkshires next weekend. We have our reservations, we have our performance tickets. We're going to the Berkshires, not to Cleveland where the family is gathering. I'm working on composing something to be read at the dinner.

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New tooth!!! My long journey with my extracted tooth is OVER. I have a new bionic tooth as of about 8:45 Wednesday morning. This all started in October after we returned from a very long and fun trip. About 20 dental visits, several thousand dollars, lots of dental insurance, and a new dentist later, I have two new crowns, an implant to replace the extracted tooth, and a third crown to take the place of the missing tooth. The technology is very cool. I've encountered and gotten to know some extraordinarily kind and caring people. And I'm very happy with the results. My next scheduled appointment is sometime next fall for a cleaning, and let's hope that's the next time I need to go in. Hooray.

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My computer, which is all of two years old, has developed some highly annoying habits. One is that the keyboard disconnects regularly and I either have to wait a while and try again or reboot. I'm fairly good at discerning patterns but haven't figured out why the keyboard goes out or what causes it to start working again. It once even stopped working while I was in the middle of using it. Robert and I have both searched for answers to this problem but have come up empty-handed.

So, the two years having elapsed, I bought a new computer. I wasn't thrilled about getting Vista, but that's the Model Ford option I was offered (you can have any Windows operating system you want as long as it's Vista). On KAH's recommendation, I bought a Dell, not for the hardware, but for the support offered.

We fired it up this morning so that it could download the usual thousand patches before I start transferring data from old to new machine. I set up the hardware (always easy and fun) and powered it on.

And... the network isn't working. Robert has been trying to figure it out for hours. He's already called Dell support and got a few levels up, only to be told very politely and in fairly light Indian accents to upgrade the driver for our router. At that point, with callback and reference numbers in hand, he thanked them and hung up.

He had, of course, already tried this and about a hundred other fixes. Apparently, firing up Vista on a new computer and discovering a nonworking network is a common occurrence. The intertubes are filled with old-geeks-tales of how the situation was resolved. Somehow, the solutions haven't helped us. At least not yet.

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And before you tell me the obvious solution, Bad Idea. When I first started buying computers for personal use, everyone said "Buy Apple. They're wonderful. I LOOOVVVE my Apple." So I did. With Windows at work, and a bachelor's degree in computer science, I understood how operating systems and computers worked. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but my little Apple machines made it nearly impossible for me. Everything was processed into such baby food that you couldn't actually DO anything on the computer. For example, I spent months being unable to print documents. Don't ask me why; don't ask me how. I finally gave up and became a Windows person at home as well as at work.

Firing up the Vista has proven to be a similar experience. It took Robert a good five minutes just to find the stupid command prompt, only to discover that nearly everything he knows about actually getting a Windows machine to work has been changed, even at the command level. Thank you, Gerber, for creating our new operating sytem. I want to start writing a series of books called NOT FOR DUMMIES: How to accomplish real work with baby-food operating systems.

At this point, we're tired and frustrated. Even the cats are napping. Well, they'd be doing that anyways in the middle of the day, but you get my general point. As one of my friends would say, HATEFUL TECHNOLOGY. HATEFUL TECHNOLOGY. psshh and feh.