Computer Woe Times Two

Seeing the UPS truck pull out outside our house late Wednesday afternoon made me happy. The new modem had arrived! But, guess what? It was not the modem he left on my front porch. Another package I'd been expecting sat there waiting to be picked up.

Thursday, I had a busy day from early morn til evening. One of the things we did was to attend a Landon Lecture Series on the K-State campus. The guest speaker was Justice Sonia Sotamayor, one of the more recent judges appointed to the Supreme Court. Ken and I were both very impressed by her answers to questions addressed to her by a three person panel. She's a most interesting person who appears to take her job very seriously.

But back to the modem story--the UPS man had left it on the porch while we were away. Happiness is what I felt when I saw the box there. I immediately opened it, hooked up the three cords and waited for the internet to magically appear. Just the fact that I figured out what cords went where is a major accomplishment for me--the world's biggest clutz when it comes to anything mechanical.

I called the tech support my server offers and got the 'next available representative' message. I wonder sometimes if they have only one guy there! After 50 minutes of waiting, I finally had to hang up and zip off to Bridge Club.

This morning, I tried tech support again and got a rep after less than ten minutes. Turns out that the company has been doing some conversions with DSL and there were some settings that had to be redone on my router and Outlook Express e-mail program. Shame the other guy hadn't mentioned that. Would have saved me a great deal of frustration.

The nice young man I spoke with this morning guided me through the changes, and I was connected to the world once again. There were 152 e-mail messages waiting for me. Guess what I'll be doing this week-end?
I'd like to tackle them this afternoon, but I'm booked with friends for a birthday lunch for two of them, which I know I'll enjoy. After that--the e-mails.

All this did allow me time Wednesday to begin sorting out the big notebook I keep of all the things I've written. It had become too full, so I purchased a new notebook and am dividing the writings into fiction and poetry for one book, no-fiction and articles for the other one. I'm about halfway done with that project. Feels good to get going on that job that has been nagging at me for weeks now.

Next week, back to my writing world here. Meanwhile, I wish all of you perfect running computers.