Back in the Groove

When we travel, I always keep a mental list of places I do not want to move to. For example, if we had traveled through Granby I would have put it on my mental list. I also keep a mental list of jobs I've never want to do, like working at a liquor store or cleaning cages at a zoo. Fixing computers is now a job on my mental list.

It took me six hours one evening and two hours the next morning to finally get our computer up and running. Our computer crashed seven days ago and yesterday we received the restoration disc. The envelope it arrived in said it was overnight air delivery - I figured it went to Tanzania, then over to Somalia then back to Denver before the company, which is, believe it or not, based in Denver, before the brilliant minds at K12 figured out we have no airport in Granby. It was then put on the UPS truck, which went to Silverthorne, which is past Granby, then to Kremmling then to Granby then to the post office. How did a UPS package end up at a post office...I don't know - for most things around here I shrug my shoulders and say, oh well, it's Granby.

I drank two and a half glasses of wine while fixing the computer the first evening. The first step stated "when you restart your computer immediately press the Y key numerous times; this is important and oftentimes you miss this message - PLEASE DO NOT MISS THIS MESSAGE OR YOU WILL HAVE TO BEGIN THE PROCESS AGAIN." I hadn't started drinking yet, so I did not miss the message as I poised, alertly, over the keyboard, continually checking to make sure the Y key had not moved.

This was not the end of the frightening messages - numerous times throughout the six pages of instruction it stated, DO NOT MISS THIS MESSAGE OR YOU WILL HAVE TO BEGIN THE PROCESS AGAIN. By this time I had had one and a half glasses of wine, so the message was losing its impact.

By 9:30 I had restored the computer, however I could not hook up to the Internet. Our Verizon wireless stick was not "RECOGNIZED" by our computer. I know they hadn't seen each other in seven days but it is a computer, they're supposed to be smarter than us.

Thus the next morning I was at the Verizon dealer (which also sells fudge, Christian CDs, is the FedEx location and offers chiropractor services). He plugged it into his computer and said, "There's nothing wrong with this, I'm not sure why your computer doesn't recognize this." Was I sold a stupid computer? One with the beginning symptoms of Alzheimer's? Back home I went and called the helpful people at the Tech Support; by this time I had four reference numbers, so it took them quite a bit to figure out where I was in the process. It didn't help that they asked me difficult questions like "What was the last step you completed?" "I don't remember, I think maybe the printer one, no wait, maybe the one before it???" (I was embarrassed to tell him about the wine.)

At any rate, by 11:30 yesterday morning I had it up and running and Ian and I were back on track. Sort of. It took me a few minutes to remember the name of this blog; everything my computer remembered it no longer did - after all, I was sold a learning disabled computer.