just when you are on vac and relaxing....

Right, how to put this? I had a stressful morning, you see. Taking someone to yet another social services place. In a wheelchair. Him, not me. So I got back home and made tea, and was looking at news, when all of a sudden, everything stalled, and no servers to be found.

I am so anti-tech, I sometimes do not know how I ever get anything to work. It's like a leap of faith or something. And Lazarus, my computer who keeps dying and mysteriously coming back to life, not that I have anything to do with it... it's God, whoever SHE is.... Lazarus is a tricky sob at the best of times. The other day he ATE my Excel programme and it is no longer there, for instance.

But I did think to look at my modem. There are supposed to be five lights on. Don't ask me what they are for, couldn't say. But five. There were only four. And I thought, 'OH, just turn it off, wait a minute or so, turn it back on, and it will re-initialise, and all will be well.' It sadly blipped and gave an inaudible sigh.... and all I got were two lights. Tried again? Three.

So am one of those people who, when things go wrong, automatically think it must be my fault. I hit a button, or something. I have SDL, so of course the phone was dead, couldn't call out and yell for help. And of course I checked the connections to see if any were loose. That happens. Nothing. Two lights. Three. No telephone signal.

All that took a full hour, and that is when I yelled, 'my modem is fucking DEAD!' (other expletives deleted....)

My blood pressure was off the charts for high by then, so I decided to play some agressive cribbage and see if I could raise my pegging point average. Considering going over to one of the Turkish call centers later and picking up my e-mail. For EUR 1.60 an hour.

And an hour later? All the lights were back on, telephone connection intact... My server must have done some really intensive work and shut down for over two hours, and without notice beforehand----in the middle of a work day. How did Gollum put it? 'We hates them, Precious, we hates them FOREVER!'

And I thought it was my fault....

Tja. And one more thing.... I notice I am getting some traffic here, when I thought I was just bloviating into the void. There are two things I avoid discussing. My work-place because I KNOW that someone is accessing it from there. And US politics, because it isn't fair. I got out when the going was good, and it would not be fair to criticise now. Even though I have some very strong opinions about it turning into the very opposite of every value I was taught as a child and young person. (Yes, I was young---once.) You can click on the links in my blog roll. They express my thoughts far more eloquently than I can, and are there, on the spot, so to speak. I haven't been there in seventeen years. And have no wish to. So let's leave it at that.